She I love (alas in vain!)
She I love (alas in vain!)Floats before my slumbering eyes:When she comes she lulls my pain,When she goes what pangs arise!Thou whom love, whom memory flies,Gentle Sleep! prolong thy reign!If even thus she soothe my sighs,Never let me wake again!
Words in this poem
- soothe v. t.
- To assent to as true. Testament of Love. [Originally, to assent to as true; OE. so to verify, AS. ges to prove the truth of, to bear witness. See Sooth, a.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
She I love (alas in vain!) 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, She I love (alas in vain!), in Imaginary Conversations and Poems (1795–1863), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #21628, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/landor-poems/she-i-love-alas-in-vain.html, id L12184.
Form and metre
She I love (alas in vain!) is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABBABA. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.4 syllables.
See other poems in trochaic 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 ABABBABA vainA · eyesB · painA · ariseB · fliesB · reignA · sighsB · againA
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| She I love (alas in vain!) | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| Floats before my slumbering eyes: | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
| When she comes she lulls my pain, | 7 | ······· |
| When she goes what pangs arise! | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Thou whom love, whom memory flies, | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
| Gentle Sleep! prolong thy reign! | 7 | /˘·˘/·· |
| If even thus she soothe my sighs, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Never let me wake again! | 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.