Macgregor
Oh! swifter than the hart my life hath fled,A shadow'd dream; one winged glance hath seenIts only good; its hours (how few serene!)The sweet and bitter tide of thought have fed:Ephemeral world! in pride and sorrow bred,Who hope in thee, are blind as I have been;I hoped in thee, and thus my heart's loved queenHath borne it mid her nerveless, kindred dead.Her form decay'd--its beauty still survives,For in high heaven that soul will ever bloom,With which each day I more enamour'd grow:Thus though my locks are blanch'd, my hope revivesIn thinking on her home--her soul's high doom:Alas! how changed the shrine she left below!
Words in this poem
- swifter v. t.
- To tighten, as slack standing rigging, by bringing the opposite shrouds nearer.
- nerveless a.
- Destitute of nerves.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Macgregor 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, Macgregor, in The Sonnets, Triumphs and Other Poems (1859), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17650, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petrarch-sonnets/macgregor-33.html, id L14927.
Form and metre
Macgregor 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%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 21% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 fledA · seenB · sereneB · fedA · bredA · beenB · queenB · deadA · survivesC · bloomD · growC · revivesD · doomC · belowD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Oh! swifter than the hart my life hath fled, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| A shadow'd dream; one winged glance hath seen | 10 | ·/˘···˘··· |
| Its only good; its hours (how few serene!) | 10 | ·/˘··/··˘/ |
| The sweet and bitter tide of thought have fed: | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Ephemeral world! in pride and sorrow bred, | 10 | ˘/˘····/˘· |
| Who hope in thee, are blind as I have been; | 10 | ·········· |
| I hoped in thee, and thus my heart's loved queen | 10 | ·········· |
| Hath borne it mid her nerveless, kindred dead. | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Her form decay'd--its beauty still survives, | 10 | ··˘/·/˘·˘/ |
| For in high heaven that soul will ever bloom, | 10 | ···/···/˘· |
| With which each day I more enamour'd grow: | 10 | ·········· |
| Thus though my locks are blanch'd, my hope revives | 10 | ········˘/ |
| In thinking on her home--her soul's high doom: | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Alas! how changed the shrine she left below! | 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.