Triolet

Alfred Noyes (1880–1958) · 1913

trochaic tetrameter · ABAAABAB · 8 lines · from Collected Poems, Volume One

Love, awake! Ah, let thine eyesOpen, clouded with thy dreams.Now the shy sweet rosy skies,Love, awake. Ah, let thine eyesDawn before the last star dies.O'er thy breast the rose-light gleams:Love, awake! Ah, let thine eyesOpen, clouded with thy dreams.

About this text

Triolet is in the public domain. This text is taken from Collected Poems: Volume One, Project Gutenberg ebook #30501; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.

Cite as: Alfred Noyes, Triolet, in Collected Poems, Volume One (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #30501, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/noyes-collected/triolet.html, id L21394.

Form and metre

Triolet is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAAABAB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).

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. 1 ABAAABAB eyesA · dreamsB · skiesA · eyesA · diesA · gleamsB · eyesA · dreamsB
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.

LineSyl.Stress
Love, awake! Ah, let thine eyes7·˘/····
Open, clouded with thy dreams.7/˘/˘···
Now the shy sweet rosy skies,7····/˘·
Love, awake. Ah, let thine eyes7·˘/····
Dawn before the last star dies.7·······
O'er thy breast the rose-light gleams:7·······
Love, awake! Ah, let thine eyes7·˘/····
Open, clouded with thy dreams.7/˘/˘···

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.

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