Wales
Mother of holy fire! Mother of holy dew!Thy children of the mist, the moor, the mountain side,These change not from thine heart, these to thine heart allied:These, that rely on thee, as blossoms on the blue.O passionate, dark faces, melancholy's hue!O deep, gray eyes, so tragic with the fires they hide!Sweet Mother, in whose light these live! thou dost abide,Star of the West, pale to the world: these know thee true.
No alien hearts may know that magic, which acquaintsThy soul with splendid passion, a great fire of dreams;Thine heart with lovelier sorrow, than the wistful sea.Voices of Celtic singers and of Celtic SaintsLive on the ancient air: their royal sunlight gleamsOn moorland Merioneth and on sacred Dee.
Words in this poem
- wistful a.
- Longing; wishful; desirous. [For wishful; perhaps influenced by wistly, which is probably corrupted from OE. wisly certainly (from Icel. viss certain, akin to E. wit). See Wish.]
- moorland n.
- Land consisting of a moor or moors. [AS. morland.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Wales 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, Wales, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66520, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/johnson-lionel-poems/wales.html, id L12543.
Form and metre
Wales is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in iambic hexameter.
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 ABBAABBA dewA · sideB · alliedB · blueA · hueA · hideB · abideB · trueA
- 2 -AB-AB acquaints · dreamsA · seaB · saints · gleamsA · deeB
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Mother of holy fire! Mother of holy dew! | 12 | /˘·/˘//˘·/˘· |
| Thy children of the mist, the moor, the mountain side, | 12 | ·/˘······/˘· |
| These change not from thine heart, these to thine heart allied: | 12 | ··········˘/ |
| These, that rely on thee, as blossoms on the blue. | 12 | ··˘/···/˘··· |
| O passionate, dark faces, melancholy's hue! | 12 | ·/˘˘·/˘/˘·˘· |
| O deep, gray eyes, so tragic with the fires they hide! | 12 | ·····/˘··/·· |
| Sweet Mother, in whose light these live! thou dost abide, | 12 | ·/˘·······˘/ |
| Star of the West, pale to the world: these know thee true. | 12 | ············ |
| No alien hearts may know that magic, which acquaints | 12 | ·/˘····/˘·˘/ |
| Thy soul with splendid passion, a great fire of dreams; | 12 | ···/˘/˘··/·· |
| Thine heart with lovelier sorrow, than the wistful sea. | 13 | ······/˘··/˘· |
| Voices of Celtic singers and of Celtic Saints | 12 | /˘·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Live on the ancient air: their royal sunlight gleams | 12 | ···/˘··/˘/·· |
| On moorland Merioneth and on sacred Dee. | 12 | ·/·/˘˘˘··/˘· |
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.