Chaplain
Before our eyes a heavenly lightIn woman's form, but shining bright,Seized her and vanished straight.
With a hermit-wife I had no part,All memories evade me;And yet my sad and stricken heartWould more than half persuade me.
Words in this poem
- stricken p. p.
- Struck; smitten; wounded; as, the stricken deer.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chaplain is in the public domain. This text is taken from Shakuntala and Other Works, Project Gutenberg ebook #16659, the Arthur W. Ryder translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Kalidasa, Chaplain, in Shakuntala and Other Works (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16659, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kalidasa-shakuntala/chaplain.html, id L15639.
Form and metre
Chaplain is 7 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.9 syllables.
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 AA- lightA · brightA · straight
- 2 ABAB partA · meB · heartA · meB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Before our eyes a heavenly light | 10 | ··/˘··/˘˘· |
| In woman's form, but shining bright, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Seized her and vanished straight. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| With a hermit-wife I had no part, | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| All memories evade me; | 7 | ·/˘˘˘/· |
| And yet my sad and stricken heart | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Would more than half persuade me. | 7 | ····˘/· |
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.