Daphne
Why do you follow me?--Any moment I can beNothing but a laurel-tree.
Any moment of the chaseI can leave you in my placeA pink bough for your embrace.
Yet if over hill and hollow,Still it is your will to follow,I am off;--to heel, Apollo!
About this text
Daphne is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #59167; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Daphne, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59167, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/millay-poems/daphne.html, id L24354.
Form and metre
Daphne is 9 lines in 3 stanzas of 3 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, 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 AAA meA · beA · treeA
- 2 AAA chaseA · placeA · embraceA
- 3 AAA hollowA · followA · apolloA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Why do you follow me?-- | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Any moment I can be | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| Nothing but a laurel-tree. | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Any moment of the chase | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| I can leave you in my place | 7 | ······· |
| A pink bough for your embrace. | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Yet if over hill and hollow, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Still it is your will to follow, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| I am off;--to heel, Apollo! | 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.