Cypress Leaves IV
O with what fascinating bursts and swellsBreaks out the music of the village bells,Upon the ear of the roused peasant falling,And to the church devotions gently calling!What sweet remembrances that music bringsOf early thoughts, and half-forgotten things;Things half forgotten, yet on these past dreamsDistinct, as living life, one figure beamsIn brightness and in youthful beauty—sheSleeps her long sleep beneath the willow tree;There I my never-wearied vigils keep,And there I weep, and cannot cease to weep.
About this text
Cypress Leaves IV 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 IV, in Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet (1866), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petofi-poems-bowring/cypress-leaves-iv.html, id L29806.
Form and metre
Cypress Leaves IV is 12 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
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 AABBCCDDEEFF swellsA · bellsA · fallingB · callingB · bringsC · thingsC · dreamsD · beamsD · sheE · treeE · keepF · weepF
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O with what fascinating bursts and swells | 10 | ···/˘·˘··· |
| Breaks out the music of the village bells, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Upon the ear of the roused peasant falling, | 11 | ·······/˘/˘ |
| And to the church devotions gently calling! | 11 | ····˘/˘/˘/˘ |
| What sweet remembrances that music brings | 10 | ··˘/˘˘·/˘· |
| Of early thoughts, and half-forgotten things; | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| Things half forgotten, yet on these past dreams | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| Distinct, as living life, one figure beams | 10 | ˘/·/˘··/˘· |
| In brightness and in youthful beauty—she | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| Sleeps her long sleep beneath the willow tree; | 10 | ·······/·· |
| There I my never-wearied vigils keep, | 10 | ···/˘/˘/˘· |
| And there I weep, and cannot cease to weep. | 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.