Spring
How blue the heaven serene!The blooming earth how green!O'er emerald fields, the heavenly concave blue,The sweet tones of the lark are pouring through;The sun seems looking down, and listens with delight,Midst scenes so sweet and strains so exquisite.
How blue the heaven serene!The blossoming earth how green!Green is the earth and blue the heaven: the springIs come, and I, to my lone chamber bound,Look not on heaven above, nor earth around,But sing my gloomy songs—wearied, my songs I sing.
Words in this poem
- lone n.
- A lane. See Loanin.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Spring 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, Spring, in Translations from Alexander Petofi, the Magyar Poet (1866), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petofi-poems-bowring/spring.html, id L29816.
Form and metre
Spring is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See 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 AABBCC sereneA · greenA · blueB · throughB · delightC · exquisiteC
- 2 AABCCB sereneA · greenA · springB · boundC · aroundC · singB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| How blue the heaven serene! | 7 | ···/˘˘/ |
| The blooming earth how green! | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| O'er emerald fields, the heavenly concave blue, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| The sweet tones of the lark are pouring through; | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| The sun seems looking down, and listens with delight, | 12 | ···/˘··/˘·˘/ |
| Midst scenes so sweet and strains so exquisite. | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| How blue the heaven serene! | 7 | ···/˘˘/ |
| The blossoming earth how green! | 7 | ·/˘˘··· |
| Green is the earth and blue the heaven: the spring | 10 | ·······/·· |
| Is come, and I, to my lone chamber bound, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Look not on heaven above, nor earth around, | 10 | ···/······ |
| But sing my gloomy songs—wearied, my songs I sing. | 12 | ···/˘·/˘···· |
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.