Ronsard: His Lady’s Tomb
AS in the gardens, all through May, the rose,Lovely, and young, and fair apparelled,Makes sunrise jealous of her rosy red,When dawn upon the dew of dawning glows;Graces and Loves within her breast repose,The woods are faint with the sweet odour shed,Till rains and heavy suns have smitten deadThe languid flower, and the loose leaves unclose,—
So this, the perfect beauty of our days,When earth and heaven were vocal of her praise,The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes;And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tombPour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom,That dead, as living, she may be with roses.
Words in this poem
- odour n.
- Any smell, whether fragrant or offensive; scent; perfume. [OE. odor, odour, OF. odor, odour, F. odeur, fr. L. odor; akin to olere to smell, Gr. Olfactory, Osmium, Ozone, Redolent.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Ronsard: His Lady’s Tomb 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: His Lady’s Tomb, in Ballads and Lyrics of Old France (1872), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #795, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lang-old-france/his-lady-s-tomb.html, id L26903.
Form and metre
Ronsard: His Lady’s Tomb is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 A-BAABBA roseA · apparelled · redB · glowsA · reposeA · shedB · deadB · uncloseA
- 2 AABCCB daysA · praiseA · reposesB · tombC · bloomC · rosesB
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| AS in the gardens, all through May, the rose, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Lovely, and young, and fair apparelled, | 10 | /˘····˘/˘˘ |
| Makes sunrise jealous of her rosy red, | 10 | ·/·/˘··/˘· |
| When dawn upon the dew of dawning glows; | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Graces and Loves within her breast repose, | 10 | /˘······˘/ |
| The woods are faint with the sweet odour shed, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Till rains and heavy suns have smitten dead | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| The languid flower, and the loose leaves unclose,— | 10 | ·/˘/····˘/ |
| So this, the perfect beauty of our days, | 10 | ···/·/˘·/· |
| When earth and heaven were vocal of her praise, | 10 | ···/·/˘··· |
| The fates have slain, and her sweet soul reposes; | 11 | ········/·˘ |
| And tears I bring, and sighs, and on her tomb | 10 | ·········· |
| Pour milk, and scatter buds of many a bloom, | 10 | ···/˘··/·· |
| That dead, as living, she may be with roses. | 11 | ···/˘····/˘ |
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.