A Farewell
My fairest child, I have no song to give you;No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray;Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave youFor every day.
Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever;Do noble things, not dream them all day long:And so make life, death, and that vast foreverOne grand, sweet song.
About this text
A Farewell is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems Every Child Should Know The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library, Project Gutenberg ebook #16436; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Mary E. Burt, A Farewell, in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/a-farewell.html, id L25173.
Form and metre
A Farewell is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
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 ABAB youA · grayB · youA · dayB
- 2 ABAB cleverA · longB · foreverA · songB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My fairest child, I have no song to give you; | 11 | ·/˘········ |
| No lark could pipe to skies so dull and gray; | 10 | ·········· |
| Yet, ere we part, one lesson I can leave you | 11 | ·····/˘···· |
| For every day. | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| Be good, sweet maid, and let who will be clever; | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| Do noble things, not dream them all day long: | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And so make life, death, and that vast forever | 11 | ········˘/˘ |
| One grand, sweet song. | 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.