Song
If thou art sleeping, maiden,Awake and open thy door,'T is the break of day, and we must away,O'er meadow, and mount, and moor.
Wait not to find thy slippers,But come with thy naked feet;We shall have to pass through the dewy grass,And waters wide and fleet.
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
Song 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, Song, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/song-3.html, id L18614.
Form and metre
Song is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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.
- 2 -A-A slippers · feetA · grass · fleetA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| If thou art sleeping, maiden, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Awake and open thy door, | 7 | ˘/·/˘·· |
| 'T is the break of day, and we must away, | 11 | ·········˘/ |
| O'er meadow, and mount, and moor. | 7 | ·/····· |
| Wait not to find thy slippers, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| But come with thy naked feet; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| We shall have to pass through the dewy grass, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And waters wide and fleet. | 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.