To the River Yvette
O lovely river of Yvette!O darling river! like a bride,Some dimpled, bashful, fair Lisette,Thou goest to wed the Orge's tide.
Maincourt, and lordly Dampierre,See and salute thee on thy way,And, with a blessing and a prayer,Ring the sweet bells of St. Forget.
The valley of Chevreuse in vainWould hold thee in its fond embrace;Thou glidest from its arms againAnd hurriest on with swifter pace.
Thou wilt not stay; with restless feetPursuing still thine onward flight,Thou goest as one in haste to meetHer sole desire, her head's delight.
O lovely river of Yvette!O darling stream! on balanced wingsThe wood-birds sang the chansonnetteThat here a wandering poet sings.
Words in this poem
- bashful a.
- Abashed; daunted; dismayed. [See Bash.]
- swifter v. t.
- To tighten, as slack standing rigging, by bringing the opposite shrouds nearer.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To the River Yvette 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, To the River Yvette, in A Psalm of Life, and Other Poems (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/to-the-river-yvette.html, id L17785.
Form and metre
To the River Yvette is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 4 of its 5 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 30% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 ABAB yvetteA · brideB · lisetteA · tideB
- 3 ABAB vainA · embraceB · againA · paceB
- 4 ABAB feetA · flightB · meetA · delightB
- 5 ABAB yvetteA · wingsB · chansonnetteA · singsB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O lovely river of Yvette! | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| O darling river! like a bride, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Some dimpled, bashful, fair Lisette, | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| Thou goest to wed the Orge's tide. | 8 | ········ |
| Maincourt, and lordly Dampierre, | 8 | ···/˘/˘˘ |
| See and salute thee on thy way, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| And, with a blessing and a prayer, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Ring the sweet bells of St. Forget. | 8 | ······˘/ |
| The valley of Chevreuse in vain | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Would hold thee in its fond embrace; | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Thou glidest from its arms again | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| And hurriest on with swifter pace. | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Thou wilt not stay; with restless feet | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Pursuing still thine onward flight, | 8 | ˘/˘··/˘· |
| Thou goest as one in haste to meet | 8 | ········ |
| Her sole desire, her head's delight. | 8 | ··˘/··˘/ |
| O lovely river of Yvette! | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| O darling stream! on balanced wings | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| The wood-birds sang the chansonnette | 8 | ········ |
| That here a wandering poet sings. | 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.