Drink!
Hast thou no fair maiden? Drink!Soon thy raptured soul will thinkAll fair maidens—all their charmsAre encircled in thine arms.
Art thou penniless? Then drink!Thy delighted soul will thinkPiles of riches fill thy door,Thou wilt be no longer poor.
Do dull cares corrode thee? Drink!Soon thy buoyant heart shall thinkThousand sprites are come to bearAll thy sorrows otherwhere.
Maiden! money! I have none,Mine is misery alone;And for these three griefs of mine,I must thank thee—dangerous wine!
Words in this poem
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- penniless a.
- Destitute of money; impecunious; poor. [From Penny.]
- delighted a.
- Endowed with delight.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- otherwhere adv.
- In or to some other place, or places; elsewhere.
- thank n.
- A expression of gratitude; an acknowledgment expressive of a sense of favor or kindness received; obligation, claim, or desert, or gratitude; -- now generally used in the plural. [AS. Þanc, Þonc, thanks, favor, thought; akin to OS. thank favor, pleasure, thanks, D. & G. dank thanks, Icel. Þ\'94kk, Dan. tak, Sw. tack, Goth. Þagks thanks; -]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Drink! 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, Drink!, in Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet (1866), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petofi-poems-bowring/drink.html, id L29796.
Form and metre
Drink! is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
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 AABB drinkA · thinkA · charmsB · armsB
- 2 AABB drinkA · thinkA · doorB · poorB
- 3 AABB drinkA · thinkA · bearB · otherwhereB
- 4 AABB noneA · aloneA · mineB · wineB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hast thou no fair maiden? Drink! | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Soon thy raptured soul will think | 8 | ··/˘˘··· |
| All fair maidens—all their charms | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Are encircled in thine arms. | 8 | ·˘/˘˘··· |
| Art thou penniless? Then drink! | 7 | ··/˘˘·· |
| Thy delighted soul will think | 7 | ·˘/˘··· |
| Piles of riches fill thy door, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Thou wilt be no longer poor. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Do dull cares corrode thee? Drink! | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| Soon thy buoyant heart shall think | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Thousand sprites are come to bear | 7 | /˘····· |
| All thy sorrows otherwhere. | 7 | ··/˘/˘˘ |
| Maiden! money! I have none, | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| Mine is misery alone; | 7 | ··/˘˘˘/ |
| And for these three griefs of mine, | 7 | ······· |
| I must thank thee—dangerous wine! | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
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.