Triolet
Few in joy's sweet riotAble are to listen:Thou, to make me quiet,Quenchest the sweet riot,Tak'st away my diet,Puttest me in prison--Quenchest joy's sweet riotThat the heart may listen.
About this text
Triolet is in the public domain. This text is taken from The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #9984; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: George MacDonald, Triolet, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/triolet-2.html, id L22382.
Form and metre
Triolet is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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 ABAAA-AB riotA · listenB · quietA · riotA · dietA · prison · riotA · listenB
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 trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Few in joy's sweet riot | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Able are to listen: | 6 | /˘··/˘ |
| Thou, to make me quiet, | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Quenchest the sweet riot, | 6 | /˘··/˘ |
| Tak'st away my diet, | 6 | ·˘/·/˘ |
| Puttest me in prison-- | 6 | /˘··/˘ |
| Quenchest joy's sweet riot | 6 | /˘··/˘ |
| That the heart may listen. | 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.