Ronsard: Deadly Kisses
ALL take these lips away; no more,No more such kisses give to me.My spirit faints for joy; I seeThrough mists of death the dreamy shore,And meadows by the water-side,Where all about the Hollow LandFare the sweet singers that have died,With their lost ladies, hand in hand;Ah, Love, how fireless are their eyes,How pale their lips that kiss and smile!So mine must be in little whileIf thou wilt kiss me in such wise.
Words in this poem
- dreamy a.
- Abounding in dreams or given to dreaming; appropriate to, or like, dreams; visionary.
- fireless a.
- Destitute of fire.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Ronsard: Deadly Kisses is in the public domain. This text is taken from Ballads and Lyrics of Old France, with Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #795, the Andrew Lang 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: Various, Ronsard: Deadly Kisses, in Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #795, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lang-old-france/deadly-kisses.html, id L26899.
Form and metre
Ronsard: Deadly Kisses is 12 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBACDCDEFFE. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
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 ABBACDCDEFFE moreA · meB · seeB · shoreA · sideC · landD · diedC · handD · eyesE · smileF · whileF · wiseE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| ALL take these lips away; no more, | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| No more such kisses give to me. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| My spirit faints for joy; I see | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Through mists of death the dreamy shore, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And meadows by the water-side, | 8 | ·/···/˘· |
| Where all about the Hollow Land | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Fare the sweet singers that have died, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| With their lost ladies, hand in hand; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Ah, Love, how fireless are their eyes, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| How pale their lips that kiss and smile! | 8 | ········ |
| So mine must be in little while | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| If thou wilt kiss me in such wise. | 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.