Cypress Leaves II
Had I not loved that blonde-haired, beauteous child,Moving on earth, and breathing living breath,I should have worshipped it upon my knees,When sleeping it was sanctified by death.
How blest, how beautiful that sleep! I sawA white swan rising thro' the red-dawn eaves;While the pure snow, among the winter roses,Dissolved by death was melted on their leaves.
Words in this poem
- beauteous a.
- Full of beauty; beautiful; very handsome. [Mostly poetic] -- Beau"te*ous*ly, adv. --
- sanctified a.
- Made holy; also, made to have the air of sanctity; sanctimonious.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Cypress Leaves II 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, Cypress Leaves II, in Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet (1866), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petofi-poems-bowring/cypress-leaves-ii.html, id L29804.
Form and metre
Cypress Leaves II is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
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 -A-A child · breathA · knees · deathA
- 2 -A-A saw · eavesA · roses · leavesA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Had I not loved that blonde-haired, beauteous child, | 11 | ·······/˘˘· |
| Moving on earth, and breathing living breath, | 10 | /˘···/˘/˘· |
| I should have worshipped it upon my knees, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| When sleeping it was sanctified by death. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘˘·· |
| How blest, how beautiful that sleep! I saw | 10 | ···/˘˘···· |
| A white swan rising thro' the red-dawn eaves; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| While the pure snow, among the winter roses, | 11 | ·······/˘/˘ |
| Dissolved by death was melted on their leaves. | 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.