Page
O strength divine of Roman days,O spirit of the age of faith,Go with our sons on all their ways,When we long since are dust and wraith.
Words in this poem
- wraith n.
- An apparition of a person in his exact likeness, seen before death, or a little after; hence, an apparition; a specter; a vision; an unreal image. [Scot. wraith, warth; probably originally, a guardian angel, from Icel. vörthr a warden, guardian, akin to E. ward. See Ward a guard.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Page is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems: New and Old, Project Gutenberg ebook #24405; 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 John Newbolt, Page, in Poems: New and Old (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #24405, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/newbolt-poems/page.html, id L11376.
Form and metre
Page is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.2 syllables.
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 daysA · faithB · waysA · wraithB
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 strength divine of Roman days, | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| O spirit of the age of faith, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Go with our sons on all their ways, | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| When we long since are dust and wraith. | 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.