Friendship
Friends came—false friends—and left me as they came,As they came, let them go, in God's own name!As leaves they fell from the abandoned tree,That leafless tree, my heart—so let it be!But though the cold winds blow those leaves away,A future spring will herald a bright day;And heaven be gladdened when the earth is glad;But, when the old branches with new leaves are clad,Of the fallen leaves—ye false ones! be it known—None shall grow green again, not even one.
Words in this poem
- clad v.
- To clothe. Holland.
- 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,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Friendship 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, Friendship, in Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet (1866), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petofi-poems-bowring/friendship.html, id L29812.
Form and metre
Friendship is 10 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 86%).
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 AABBCCDDEE cameA · nameA · treeB · beB · awayC · dayC · gladD · cladD · knownE · oneE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Friends came—false friends—and left me as they came, | 10 | ·········· |
| As they came, let them go, in God's own name! | 10 | ·········· |
| As leaves they fell from the abandoned tree, | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| That leafless tree, my heart—so let it be! | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| But though the cold winds blow those leaves away, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| A future spring will herald a bright day; | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| And heaven be gladdened when the earth is glad; | 10 | ·/·/˘····· |
| But, when the old branches with new leaves are clad, | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| Of the fallen leaves—ye false ones! be it known— | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| None shall grow green again, not even one. | 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.