Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives
Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives,Alcestis rises from the shades;Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that givesImmortal youth to mortal maids.
Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veilHide all the peopled hills you see,The gay, the proud, while lovers hailThese many summers you and me.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- peopled a.
- Stocked with, or as with, people; inhabited.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives is in the public domain. This text is taken from Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection, Project Gutenberg ebook #21628; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Walter Savage Landor, Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives, in Imaginary Conversations and Poems (1795–1863), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #21628, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/landor-poems/past-ruin-d-ilion-helen-lives.html, id L12186.
Form and metre
Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 38% 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 livesA · shadesB · givesA · maidsB
- 2 ABAB veilA · seeB · hailA · 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Past ruin'd Ilion Helen lives, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Alcestis rises from the shades; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Verse calls them forth; 'tis verse that gives | 8 | ········ |
| Immortal youth to mortal maids. | 8 | ˘/˘··/˘· |
| Soon shall Oblivion's deepening veil | 8 | ··˘/˘/˘· |
| Hide all the peopled hills you see, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The gay, the proud, while lovers hail | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| These many summers you and me. | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
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.