Rondel
Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine?Naught see I fixed or sure in thee!I do not know thee,--nor what deeds are thine:Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine?Naught see I fixed or sure in thee!
Shall I be mute, or vows with prayers combine?Ye who are blessed in loving, tell it me:Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine?Naught see I permanent or sure in thee!
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
Rondel 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, Rondel, in A Psalm of Life, and Other Poems (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/rondel.html, id L26188.
Form and metre
Rondel is 9 lines in 2 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See 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 ABAAB mineA · theeB · thineA · mineA · theeB
- 2 ABAB combineA · meB · mineA · theeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine? | 10 | ·········· |
| Naught see I fixed or sure in thee! | 9 | ····˘···· |
| I do not know thee,--nor what deeds are thine: | 10 | ·········· |
| Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine? | 10 | ·········· |
| Naught see I fixed or sure in thee! | 9 | ····˘···· |
| Shall I be mute, or vows with prayers combine? | 10 | ········/˘ |
| Ye who are blessed in loving, tell it me: | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Love, love, what wilt thou with this heart of mine? | 10 | ·········· |
| Naught see I permanent or sure in thee! | 10 | ···/˘˘···· |
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.