Youth and Love
What does youth know of love?Little enough, I trow!He plucks the myrtle for his brow,For his forehead the rose.Nay, but of loveIt is not youth who knows.
Words in this poem
- trow v. i.
- To believe; to trust; to think or suppose. [OE. trowen, AS.treówan to trust, believe, fr. treów trust, treówe true, faithful. See True.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Youth and Love 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, Youth and Love, in A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56974, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/levy-london-plane-tree/youth-and-love.html, id L21535.
Form and metre
Youth and Love is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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--BAB loveA · trow · brow · roseB · loveA · knowsB
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| What does youth know of love? | 6 | ······ |
| Little enough, I trow! | 6 | /˘˘/·· |
| He plucks the myrtle for his brow, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| For his forehead the rose. | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| Nay, but of love | 4 | ···· |
| It is not youth who knows. | 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.