Dreaming
Is it a dream that shows meYonder vision airy?Is she a mortal maiden?Is she a spirit fairy?
Whether maiden or fairy,Little indeed I care,Would she only love me,Smiling sweetly there.
Words in this poem
- yonder adv.
- At a distance, but within view. [OE. yonder, ýonder; cf. OD. ginder, Goth. jaindr there. Yond, adv.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Dreaming 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, Dreaming, in Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet (1866), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petofi-poems-bowring/dreaming.html, id L29786.
Form and metre
Dreaming is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
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 -A-A me · airyA · maiden · fairyA
- 2 -A-A fairy · careA · me · thereA
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.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Is it a dream that shows me | 7 | ······· |
| Yonder vision airy? | 6 | /˘/˘/˘ |
| Is she a mortal maiden? | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Is she a spirit fairy? | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Whether maiden or fairy, | 7 | ··/˘·/˘ |
| Little indeed I care, | 6 | /˘˘/·· |
| Would she only love me, | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| Smiling sweetly there. | 5 | /˘/˘· |
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.