Morna
Gloomy son of Mugruch, Duchommar!I love thee not: hard is thy heartof rock; dark thy terrible brow. ButCadmor the son of Tarman, thou artthe love of Morna! thou art like a sunbeamon the hill, in the day of thegloomy storm. Sawest thou the son ofTarman, lovely on the hill of the chace?Here the daughter of Cormac-Carbrewaiteth the coming of Cadmor.
Words in this poem
- sunbeam n.
- A beam or ray of the sun. [AS. sunnebeam.]
- chace v. t.
- To pursue. See Chase v. t.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Morna is in the public domain. This text is taken from Fragments of Ancient Poetry, Project Gutenberg ebook #8161; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: James Macpherson, Morna, in Fragments of Ancient Poetry (1760), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8161, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macpherson-ossian/morna-2.html, id L09657.
Form and metre
Morna is 10 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%). 87% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.9 syllables. 70% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic 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 AB-B-----A duchommarA · heartB · but · artB · sunbeam · the · of · chace · carbre · cadmorA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Gloomy son of Mugruch, Duchommar! | 9 | /˘······· |
| I love thee not: hard is thy heart | 8 | ········ |
| of rock; dark thy terrible brow. But | 9 | ····/˘˘·· |
| Cadmor the son of Tarman, thou art | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| the love of Morna! thou art like a sunbeam | 11 | ···/˘····/· |
| on the hill, in the day of the | 8 | ········ |
| gloomy storm. Sawest thou the son of | 9 | /˘······· |
| Tarman, lovely on the hill of the chace? | 10 | /˘/˘······ |
| Here the daughter of Cormac-Carbre | 8 | ··/˘·/˘· |
| waiteth the coming of Cadmor. | 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.