Part I: Section 5
High on a cliff, with spacious halls,A castle stood, (the price of tearsAnd toil to serfs through weary years),Where in the morning shadow fallsFrom pine-clad hill to castle walls.And Prince Gudàl, so stern and gray,Had bade his thralls to hew a wayDown that steep cliff's resisting side,Till step by step led to the waterWhere deep Aràgva's currents glide,And oft Tamàra, his young daughter,Would come in veil and snow-white hoodTo fill her pitcher at its flood.
Words in this poem
- clad v.
- To clothe. Holland.
- bade
- A form of the pat tense of Bid.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Part I: Section 5 is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Demon, translated from the Russian of Lermontoff by Robert Burness, B.A. (Oxon.), Edinburgh: Douglas & Foulis, 1918, Internet Archive, the Robert Burness 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: Mikhail Lermontov, Part I: Section 5, in The Demon (1918), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lermontov-demon/1-5.html, id L28458.
Form and metre
Part I: Section 5 is 13 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 62% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 ABBAACCDEDEFF hallsA · tearsB · yearsB · fallsA · wallsA · grayC · wayC · sideD · waterE · glideD · daughterE · hoodF · floodF
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 |
|---|---|---|
| High on a cliff, with spacious halls, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| A castle stood, (the price of tears | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| And toil to serfs through weary years), | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Where in the morning shadow falls | 8 | ···/˘/·· |
| From pine-clad hill to castle walls. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And Prince Gudàl, so stern and gray, | 8 | ········ |
| Had bade his thralls to hew a way | 8 | ········ |
| Down that steep cliff's resisting side, | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
| Till step by step led to the water | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Where deep Aràgva's currents glide, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And oft Tamàra, his young daughter, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Would come in veil and snow-white hood | 8 | ········ |
| To fill her pitcher at its flood. | 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.