The Wine of Jurançon
Little sweet wine of Jurançon,You are dear to my memory still!With mine host and his merry song,Under the rose-tree I drank my fill.
Twenty years after, passing that way,Under the trellis I found againMine host, still sitting there au frais,And singing still the same refrain.
The Jurançon, so fresh and bold,Treats me as one it used to know;Souvenirs of the days of oldAlready from the bottle flow,
With glass in hand our glances met;We pledge, we drink. How sour it isNever Argenteuil piquetteWas to my palate sour as this!
And yet the vintage was good, in sooth;The self-same juice, the self-same cask!It was you, O gayety of my youth,That failed in the autumnal flask!
Words in this poem
- drank n.
- Wild oats, or darnel grass. See Drake a plant. [Cf. 3d Drake.]
- piquette n.
- A game at cards played between two persons, with thirty-two cards, all the deuces, threes, fours, fives, and sixes, being set aside. [F., prob. fr. pique. See Pique, Pike, and Picket.]
- sooth a.
- True; faithful; trustworthy. [OE. soth, AS. s, for san; akin to OS. s, OHG. sand, Icel. sannr, Sw. sann, Dan. sand, Skr. sat, sant, real, genuine, present, being; properly p. pr. from a root]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Wine of Jurançon 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, The Wine of Jurançon, in A Psalm of Life, and Other Poems (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/the-wine-of-juran-on.html, id L26186.
Form and metre
The Wine of Jurançon is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 3 of its 5 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 -A-A jurançon · stillA · song · fillA
- 2 ABAB wayA · againB · fraisA · refrainB
- 3 ABAB boldA · knowB · oldA · flowB
- 4 A-A- metA · is · piquetteA · this
- 5 ABAB soothA · caskB · youthA · flaskB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Little sweet wine of Jurançon, | 8 | /˘······ |
| You are dear to my memory still! | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| With mine host and his merry song, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Under the rose-tree I drank my fill. | 9 | ········· |
| Twenty years after, passing that way, | 9 | /˘···/˘·· |
| Under the trellis I found again | 9 | ···/˘··˘/ |
| Mine host, still sitting there au frais, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And singing still the same refrain. | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| The Jurançon, so fresh and bold, | 8 | ········ |
| Treats me as one it used to know; | 8 | ········ |
| Souvenirs of the days of old | 8 | ·˘/····· |
| Already from the bottle flow, | 8 | ˘/˘··/˘· |
| With glass in hand our glances met; | 8 | ····//˘· |
| We pledge, we drink. How sour it is | 8 | ·····/·· |
| Never Argenteuil piquette | 7 | /˘···˘/ |
| Was to my palate sour as this! | 8 | ···/˘/·· |
| And yet the vintage was good, in sooth; | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| The self-same juice, the self-same cask! | 8 | ········ |
| It was you, O gayety of my youth, | 10 | ····/˘˘··· |
| That failed in the autumnal flask! | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
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.