Fancies
Surely the flowers of a hundred springsAre simply the souls of beautiful things!
The poppies aflame with gold and redWere the kisses of lovers in days that are fled.
The purple pansies with dew-drops pearledWere the rainbow dreams of a youngling world.
The lily, white as a star apart,Was the first pure prayer of a virgin heart.
The daisies that dance and twinkle soWere the laughter of children in long ago.
The sweetness of all true friendship yetLives in the breath of the mignonette.
To the white narcissus there must belongThe very delight of a maiden's song.
And the rose, all flowers of the earth above,Was a perfect, rapturous thought of love.
Oh! surely the blossoms of all the springsMust be the souls of beautiful things.
Words in this poem
- aflame adv.
- Inflames; glowing with light or passion; ablaze. G. Eliot. [Pref. a- + flame.]
- youngling n.
- A young person; a youth; also, any animal in its early life. [AS. geongling.]
- twinkle v. i.
- To open and shut the eye rapidly; to blink; to wink. [OE. twinklen, AS. twinclian; akin to OE. twinken to blink, wink, G. zwinken, zwinkern, and perhaps to E. twitch.]
- mignonette n.
- A plant (Reseda odorata) having greenish flowers with orange- colored stamens, and exhaling a delicious fragrance. In Africa it is a low shrub, but further north it is usually an annual herb. [F. mignonnette, dim. of mignon darling. See 2d Minion.]
- narcissus n.
- A genus of endogenous bulbous plants with handsome flowers, having a cup-shaped crown within the six-lobed perianth, and comprising the daffodils and jonquils of several kinds. [L. narcissus, and (personified) Narcissus, Gr. na`rkissos, Na`rkissos, fr. na`rkh torpor, in allusion to the narcotic properties of the flower. Cf. Narcotic.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Fancies is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Watchman and Other Poems (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1917; Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild and Stewart, 1916), Internet Archive; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: L. M. Montgomery, Fancies, in The Watchman and Other Poems (1916), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/montgomery-watchman/fancies.html, id L29422.
Form and metre
Fancies is 18 lines in 9 stanzas of 2 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 AA springsA · thingsA
- 2 AA redA · fledA
- 3 AA pearledA · worldA
- 4 AA apartA · heartA
- 5 AA soA · agoA
- 6 AA yetA · mignonetteA
- 7 AA belongA · songA
- 8 AA aboveA · loveA
- 9 AA springsA · thingsA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Surely the flowers of a hundred springs | 10 | /˘·/˘··/˘· |
| Are simply the souls of beautiful things! | 10 | ·/˘···/˘˘· |
| The poppies aflame with gold and red | 9 | ·/˘˘/···· |
| Were the kisses of lovers in days that are fled. | 12 | ··/˘·/˘····· |
| The purple pansies with dew-drops pearled | 10 | ·/˘/˘····˘ |
| Were the rainbow dreams of a youngling world. | 10 | ··/····/˘· |
| The lily, white as a star apart, | 9 | ·/˘····˘/ |
| Was the first pure prayer of a virgin heart. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| The daisies that dance and twinkle so | 9 | ·/˘···/˘· |
| Were the laughter of children in long ago. | 11 | ··/˘·/˘··˘/ |
| The sweetness of all true friendship yet | 9 | ·/˘···/˘· |
| Lives in the breath of the mignonette. | 9 | ········· |
| To the white narcissus there must belong | 10 | ···˘/˘··˘/ |
| The very delight of a maiden's song. | 10 | ·/˘˘/··/˘· |
| And the rose, all flowers of the earth above, | 10 | ····/····· |
| Was a perfect, rapturous thought of love. | 10 | ··/·/˘˘··· |
| Oh! surely the blossoms of all the springs | 10 | ·/˘·/˘···· |
| Must be the souls of beautiful things. | 9 | ·····/˘˘· |
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.