May-Night
Night of May! thou night of peace and silence,When the moonlight silvers the starr'd vault;Tell me then blonde-maiden! blue-eyed floweret,Shining pearl! what thoughts thy heart assault.
Mine are misty dreamings, passing shadows;But they keep me sleepless—crowning meLike the monarch of a mighty kingdom,And the crown is held, dear maid! is held by thee.
What a theft it were, and what a contrastWith the trashy purse that thieves purloin,Could I steal these dreams, and then convert themInto solid and substantial coin.
Words in this poem
- floweret n.
- A small flower; a floret.
- sleepless a.
- Having no sleep; wakeful.
- purloin v. t.
- To take or carry away for one's self; hence, to steal; to take by theft; to filch. [OF. purloignier, porloignier, to retard, delay; pur, por, pour, for (L. pro) + loin far, far off (L. longe). See Prolong, and cf. Eloign.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
May-Night 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, May-Night, in Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet (1866), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petofi-poems-bowring/may-night.html, id L29808.
Form and metre
May-Night is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in trochaic 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 silence · vaultA · floweret · assaultA
- 2 -A-A shadows · meA · kingdom · theeA
- 3 -A-A contrast · purloinA · them · coinA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Night of May! thou night of peace and silence, | 10 | ········/˘ |
| When the moonlight silvers the starr'd vault; | 9 | ··/·/˘··· |
| Tell me then blonde-maiden! blue-eyed floweret, | 11 | ····/˘··/˘˘ |
| Shining pearl! what thoughts thy heart assault. | 9 | /˘·····˘/ |
| Mine are misty dreamings, passing shadows; | 10 | ··/˘/˘/˘/· |
| But they keep me sleepless—crowning me | 9 | ····/˘/˘· |
| Like the monarch of a mighty kingdom, | 10 | ··/···/˘/˘ |
| And the crown is held, dear maid! is held by thee. | 11 | ··········· |
| What a theft it were, and what a contrast | 10 | ········/˘ |
| With the trashy purse that thieves purloin, | 9 | ··/˘···˘/ |
| Could I steal these dreams, and then convert them | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Into solid and substantial coin. | 9 | ··/˘·˘/˘· |
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.