Consolation
Sighing and grief are all my portion now,Sighing and grief:But thou art somewhere smiling: thou,Like a frail leaf,
By winter's mercy spared a little yet,Canst put asideThe coming shadow: happy to forget,How thy companion died.
Words in this poem
- somewhere adv.
- In some place unknown or not specified; in one place or another.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Consolation is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #66520; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Lionel Johnson, Consolation, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66520, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/johnson-lionel-poems/consolation.html, id L12533.
Form and metre
Consolation is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABAB nowA · griefB · thouA · leafB
- 2 ABAB yetA · asideB · forgetA · diedB
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sighing and grief are all my portion now, | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| Sighing and grief: | 4 | /˘·· |
| But thou art somewhere smiling: thou, | 8 | ···/·/˘· |
| Like a frail leaf, | 4 | ···· |
| By winter's mercy spared a little yet, | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Canst put aside | 4 | ··˘/ |
| The coming shadow: happy to forget, | 10 | ·/˘/·/˘·˘/ |
| How thy companion died. | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.