A Vow
I'll be a tree, if thou wilt be its blossom;I'll be a flower, if thou wilt be its dew;I'll be the dew, if thou wilt be the sunbeam;Where'er thou art, let me be near thee too.Wert thou the heaven of blue—beloved maiden,—I a fixed star in that blue heaven would be;And wert thou doomed to hell itself, dear woman,I'd seek perdition to be near to thee.
Words in this poem
- sunbeam n.
- A beam or ray of the sun. [AS. sunnebeam.]
- perdition n.
- Entire loss; utter destruction; ruin; esp., the utter loss of the soul, or of final happiness in a future state; future misery or eternal death. [F., fr. L. perditio, fr. perdere, perditum, to ruin, to lose; per (cf. Skr. para away) + -dere (only in comp.) to put; akin to Gr. do. See Do.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Vow is in the public domain. This text is taken from Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet, by Sir John Bowring (London: Trübner & Co., 1866), Internet Archive, the John Bowring translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sándor Petőfi, A Vow, in Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet (1866), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petofi-poems-bowring/a-vow.html, id L29810.
Form and metre
A Vow is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%).
See 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 ABAB-C-C blossomA · dewB · sunbeamA · tooB · maiden · beC · woman · theeC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I'll be a tree, if thou wilt be its blossom; | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| I'll be a flower, if thou wilt be its dew; | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| I'll be the dew, if thou wilt be the sunbeam; | 11 | ·········/· |
| Where'er thou art, let me be near thee too. | 11 | ˘˘/········ |
| Wert thou the heaven of blue—beloved maiden,— | 11 | ···/˘··˘//˘ |
| I a fixed star in that blue heaven would be; | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| And wert thou doomed to hell itself, dear woman, | 11 | ······˘/·/˘ |
| I'd seek perdition to be near to thee. | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
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.