Motto
All other things aboveAre liberty and love;Life would I gladly tenderFor love: yet joyfullyWould love itself surrenderFor liberty.
Words in this poem
- gladly adv.
- Preferably; by choice. [From Glad, a.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Motto 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, Motto, in Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet (1866), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petofi-poems-bowring/motto.html, id L29853.
Form and metre
Motto is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 AAB-B- aboveA · loveA · tenderB · joyfully · surrenderB · liberty
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| All other things above | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Are liberty and love; | 6 | ·/˘˘·· |
| Life would I gladly tender | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| For love: yet joyfully | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| Would love itself surrender | 7 | ··˘/˘/˘ |
| For liberty. | 4 | ·/˘˘ |
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.