Shakespeare
A vision as of crowded city streets,With human life in endless overflow;Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blowTo battle; clamor, in obscure retreats,Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets;Tolling of bells in turrets, and belowVoices of children, and bright flowers that throwO'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets!This vision comes to me when I unfoldThe volume of the Poet paramount,Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone;--Into his hands they put the lyre of gold,And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount,Placed him as Musagetes on their throne.
Words in this poem
- trumpets n.
- A plant (Sarracenia flava) with long, hollow leaves.
- anchored a.
- Held by an anchor; at anchor; held safely; as, an anchored bark; also, shaped like an anchor; forked; as, an anchored tongue.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Shakespeare 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, Shakespeare, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/shakespeare.html, id L17741.
Form and metre
Shakespeare is 14 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBAABBACDECDE, the pattern of the Italian sonnet. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%). 91% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 29% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other Italian sonnets, 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 ABBAABBACDECDE streetsA · overflowB · blowB · retreatsA · fleetsA · belowB · throwB · sweetsA · unfoldC · paramountD · aloneE · goldC · fountD · throneE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A vision as of crowded city streets, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| With human life in endless overflow; | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| Thunder of thoroughfares; trumpets that blow | 10 | /˘·/˘·/˘·· |
| To battle; clamor, in obscure retreats, | 10 | ·/˘/˘·˘/˘/ |
| Of sailors landed from their anchored fleets; | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Tolling of bells in turrets, and below | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| Voices of children, and bright flowers that throw | 10 | /˘·/˘··/·· |
| O'er garden-walls their intermingled sweets! | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| This vision comes to me when I unfold | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| The volume of the Poet paramount, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| Whom all the Muses loved, not one alone;-- | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| Into his hands they put the lyre of gold, | 10 | ·········· |
| And, crowned with sacred laurel at their fount, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Placed him as Musagetes on their throne. | 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.