Nott
Graces which liberal Heaven grants few to share:Rare virtue seldom witness'd by mankind;Experienced judgment with fair hair combined;High heavenly beauty in a humble fair;A gracefulness most excellent and rare;A voice whose music sinks into the mind;An angel gait; wit glowing and refined,The hard to break, the high and haughty tear,And brilliant eyes which turn the heart to stone,Strong to enlighten hell and night, and takeSouls from our bodies and their own to make;A speech where genius high yet gentle shone,Evermore broken by the balmiest sighs--Such magic spells transform'd me in this wise.
Words in this poem
- haughty a.
- High; lofty; bold. [OE. hautein, F. hautain, fr. haut high, OF. also halt, fr. L. altus. See Altitude.]
- evermore adv.
- During eternity; always; forever; for an indefinite period; at all times; -- often used substantively with for.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
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, Nott, in The Sonnets, Triumphs and Other Poems (1859), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17650, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/petrarch-sonnets/nott-24.html, id L14766.
Form and metre
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 85%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 14% 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 shareA · mankindB · combinedB · fairA · rareA · mindB · refinedB · tearA · stoneC · takeD · makeC · shoneD · sighsC · wiseD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Graces which liberal Heaven grants few to share: | 10 | /˘·/˘/···· |
| Rare virtue seldom witness'd by mankind; | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘·// |
| Experienced judgment with fair hair combined; | 10 | ˘/˘/˘···˘/ |
| High heavenly beauty in a humble fair; | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| A gracefulness most excellent and rare; | 10 | ······/˘·· |
| A voice whose music sinks into the mind; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| An angel gait; wit glowing and refined, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·˘/ |
| The hard to break, the high and haughty tear, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And brilliant eyes which turn the heart to stone, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Strong to enlighten hell and night, and take | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| Souls from our bodies and their own to make; | 10 | ··//˘····· |
| A speech where genius high yet gentle shone, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Evermore broken by the balmiest sighs | 10 | /˘·/˘····· |
| --Such magic spells transform'd me in this wise. | 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.