Canzone
Ah me! ah me! when thinking of the years,The vanished years, alas, I do not findAmong them all one day that was my own!Fallacious hope; desires of the unknown,Lamenting, loving, burning, and in tears(For human passions all have stirred my mind),Have held me, now I feel and know, confinedBoth from the true and good still far away.I perish day by day;The sunshine fails, the shadows grow more dreary,And I am near to fail, infirm and weary.
Words in this poem
- sunshine n.
- The light of the sun, or the place where it shines; the direct rays of the sun, the place where they fall, or the warmth and light which they give.
- dreary a.
- Sorrowful; distressful. [OE. dreori, dreri, AS. dreórig, sad; akin to G. traurig, and prob. to AS. dreósan to fall, Goth. driusan. Cf. Dross, Drear, Drizzle, Drowse.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Canzone is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Project Gutenberg ebook #1365; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Canzone, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/canzone.html, id L18098.
Form and metre
Canzone is 11 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 55% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 27% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 ABCCABBDDEE yearsA · findB · ownC · unknownC · tearsA · mindB · confinedB · awayD · dayD · drearyE · wearyE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Ah me! ah me! when thinking of the years, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| The vanished years, alas, I do not find | 10 | ·/˘·˘/···· |
| Among them all one day that was my own! | 10 | ·········· |
| Fallacious hope; desires of the unknown, | 10 | ˘/˘·˘/··˘/ |
| Lamenting, loving, burning, and in tears | 10 | ˘/˘/˘/˘··· |
| (For human passions all have stirred my mind), | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| Have held me, now I feel and know, confined | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Both from the true and good still far away. | 10 | ········˘/ |
| I perish day by day; | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| The sunshine fails, the shadows grow more dreary, | 11 | ·/···/···/˘ |
| And I am near to fail, infirm and weary. | 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.