June
Last June I saw your face three times;Three times I touched your hand;Now, as before, May month is o’er,And June is in the land.
O many Junes shall come and go,Flow’r-footed o’er the mead;O many Junes for me, to whomIs length of days decreed.
There shall be sunlight, scent of rose,Warm mist of summer rain;Only this change--I shall not lookUpon your face again.
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,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
June is in the public domain. This text is taken from A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #56974; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Amy Levy, June, in A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56974, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/levy-london-plane-tree/june.html, id L21543.
Form and metre
June is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
See other poems in common measure.
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-A times · handA · o'er · landA
- 2 -A-A go · meadA · whom · decreedA
- 3 -A-A rose · rainA · look · 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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Last June I saw your face three times; | 8 | ········ |
| Three times I touched your hand; | 6 | ······ |
| Now, as before, May month is o’er, | 8 | ········ |
| And June is in the land. | 6 | ······ |
| O many Junes shall come and go, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Flow’r-footed o’er the mead; | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| O many Junes for me, to whom | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Is length of days decreed. | 6 | ····˘/ |
| There shall be sunlight, scent of rose, | 8 | ···/···· |
| Warm mist of summer rain; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Only this change--I shall not look | 8 | /˘······ |
| Upon your face again. | 6 | ····˘/ |
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.