Solitude
From the world, and all the world's bewilderings,Solitude I sought;There to live in happiness and silence,And be—nought.
Happiness! I never knew its presence,Wildly, blindly drivenThro' the noisy street, the crowded chamber—Earth or heaven!
Ever haunted by some lynx-eyed monsterThro' the night and day,To molest me, haunt me, circumvent me,As his prey.
So I seized my staff and bound my girdle,And I took my flight,Hither, where the golden sunbeams met me,Smiling bright.
Holy solitude! now look upon me,Freed from every fetter;Let me never hear the voices calling,"You're my debtor!"
Words in this poem
- blindly adv.
- Without sight, discernment, or understanding; without thought, investigation, knowledge, or purpose of one's own.
- haunted a.
- Inhabited by, or subject to the visits of, apparitions; frequented by a ghost.
- molest v. t.
- To trouble; to disturb; to render uneasy; to interfere with; to vex. [F. molester, L. molestare, fr. molestus troublesome, fr. moles a heavy mass, load, burden. See 3d Mole.]
- circumvent v. t.
- To gain advantage over by arts, stratagem, or deception; to decieve; to delude; to get around. [L. circumventis, p. p. of circumvenire, to come around, encompass, decieve; circum + venire to come, akin to E. come.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Solitude 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, Solitude, in Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet (1866), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petofi-poems-bowring/solitude.html, id L29843.
Form and metre
Solitude is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%).
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 bewilderings · soughtA · silence · noughtA
- 3 -A-A monster · dayA · me · preyA
- 4 -A-A girdle · flightA · me · brightA
- 5 -A-A me · fetterA · calling · debtorA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| From the world, and all the world's bewilderings, | 10 | ·······˘/˘ |
| Solitude I sought; | 5 | /˘··· |
| There to live in happiness and silence, | 9 | ····/˘·/˘ |
| And be—nought. | 3 | ··· |
| Happiness! I never knew its presence, | 9 | /˘˘·/··/˘ |
| Wildly, blindly driven | 6 | /˘/˘/˘ |
| Thro' the noisy street, the crowded chamber— | 10 | ··/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Earth or heaven! | 4 | ··/˘ |
| Ever haunted by some lynx-eyed monster | 9 | //˘····/˘ |
| Thro' the night and day, | 5 | ····· |
| To molest me, haunt me, circumvent me, | 10 | ·˘/····˘/· |
| As his prey. | 3 | ··· |
| So I seized my staff and bound my girdle, | 10 | ········/˘ |
| And I took my flight, | 5 | ····· |
| Hither, where the golden sunbeams met me, | 10 | /˘··/˘/··· |
| Smiling bright. | 3 | /˘· |
| Holy solitude! now look upon me, | 10 | /˘/˘······ |
| Freed from every fetter; | 7 | ··/˘˘/˘ |
| Let me never hear the voices calling, | 9 | ··/··/˘/˘ |
| "You're my debtor!" | 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.