If I Had but Two Little Wings
“If I Had But Two Little Wings,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge(1772-1834), is recommended by a number of teachers and school-girls.
If I had but two little wingsAnd were a little feathery bird,To you I’d fly, my dear!But thoughts like these are idle thingsAnd I stay here.
But in my sleep to you I fly:I’m always with you in my sleep!The world is all one’s own.And then one wakes, and where am I?All, all alone.
About this text
If I Had but Two Little Wings 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, If I Had but Two Little Wings, in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/if-i-had-but-two-little-wings.html, id L25172.
Form and metre
If I Had but Two Little Wings is 12 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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.
- 2 A-BAB wingsA · bird · dearB · thingsA · hereB
- 3 A-BAB flyA · sleep · ownB · iA · aloneB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| “If I Had But Two Little Wings,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge | 15 | ·····/˘··/˘/˘/˘ |
| (1772-1834), is recommended by a number of teachers and school-girls. | 15 | ··˘/˘··/˘·/˘··· |
| If I had but two little wings | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And were a little feathery bird, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| To you I’d fly, my dear! | 6 | ······ |
| But thoughts like these are idle things | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And I stay here. | 4 | ···· |
| But in my sleep to you I fly: | 8 | ········ |
| I’m always with you in my sleep! | 8 | ·/······ |
| The world is all one’s own. | 6 | ······ |
| And then one wakes, and where am I? | 8 | ········ |
| All, all alone. | 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.