His Heart Lies Tangled in Her Hair (Nott)
The soft gale to the sun which shakes and spreadsThe gold which Love's own hand has spun and wrought.There, with her bright eyes and those fairy threads,Binds my poor heart and sifts each idle thought.My veins of blood, my bones of marrow fail,Thrills all my frame when I, to hear or gaze,Draw near to her, who oft, in balance frail,My life and death together holds and weighs,And see those love-fires shine wherein I burn,And, as its snow each sweetest shoulder heaves,Flash the fair tresses right and left by turn;Verse fails to paint what fancy scarce conceives.From two such lights is intellect distress'd,And by such sweetness weary and oppress'd.
Words in this poem
- heaves n.
- A disease of horses, characterized by difficult breathing, with heaving of the flank, wheezing, flatulency, and a peculiar cough; broken wind.
- scarce a.
- Not plentiful or abundant; in small quantity in proportion to the demand; not easily to be procured; rare; uncommon. [OE. scars, OF. escars, eschars, LL. scarpsus, for L. excerptus, p. p. of excerpere to pick out, and hence to contract, to shorten; ex (see Ex-) + carpere. See C]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
His Heart Lies Tangled in Her Hair (Nott) is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Sonnets, Triumphs and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #17650, the various hands 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: Petrarch, His Heart Lies Tangled in Her Hair (Nott), in The Sonnets, Triumphs and Other Poems (1859), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17650, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petrarch-sonnets/his-heart-lies-tangled-in-her-hair-nott.html, id L14747.
Form and metre
His Heart Lies Tangled in Her Hair (Nott) is 14 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBAABBACDCDCD, the pattern of the Italian sonnet. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other Italian sonnets, 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 ABBAABBACDCDCD spreadsA · wroughtB · threadsB · thoughtA · failA · gazeB · frailB · weighsA · burnC · heavesD · turnC · conceivesD · distress'dC · oppress'dD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The soft gale to the sun which shakes and spreads | 10 | ·········· |
| The gold which Love's own hand has spun and wrought. | 10 | ·········· |
| There, with her bright eyes and those fairy threads, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Binds my poor heart and sifts each idle thought. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| My veins of blood, my bones of marrow fail, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Thrills all my frame when I, to hear or gaze, | 10 | ·········· |
| Draw near to her, who oft, in balance frail, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| My life and death together holds and weighs, | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
| And see those love-fires shine wherein I burn, | 10 | ····/····· |
| And, as its snow each sweetest shoulder heaves, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Flash the fair tresses right and left by turn; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Verse fails to paint what fancy scarce conceives. | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| From two such lights is intellect distress'd, | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| And by such sweetness weary and oppress'd. | 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.