Sweet and Low
Sweet and low, sweet and low,Wind of the western sea,Low, low, breathe and blow,Wind of the western sea!Over the rolling waters go,Come from the dropping moon and blow,Blow him again to me;While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps.
Sleep and rest, sleep and rest,Father will come to thee soon;Rest, rest, on mother’s breast,Father will come to thee soon;Father will come to his babe in the nest,Silver sails all out of the westUnder the silver moon:Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep.
Words in this poem
- babe n.
- An infant; a young child of either sex; a baby. [Cf. Ir. bab, baban, W. baban, maban.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sweet and Low 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, Sweet and Low, in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/sweet-and-low.html, id L25177.
Form and metre
Sweet and Low is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 74%).
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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 ABABAAB- lowA · seaB · blowA · seaB · goA · blowA · meB · sleeps
- 2 ABABAAB- restA · soonB · breastA · soonB · nestA · westA · moonB · sleep
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 trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sweet and low, sweet and low, | 6 | ······ |
| Wind of the western sea, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Low, low, breathe and blow, | 5 | ····· |
| Wind of the western sea! | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Over the rolling waters go, | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| Come from the dropping moon and blow, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Blow him again to me; | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| While my little one, while my pretty one sleeps. | 11 | ··/˘···/˘·· |
| Sleep and rest, sleep and rest, | 6 | ······ |
| Father will come to thee soon; | 7 | /˘····· |
| Rest, rest, on mother’s breast, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Father will come to thee soon; | 7 | /˘····· |
| Father will come to his babe in the nest, | 10 | /˘········ |
| Silver sails all out of the west | 8 | /˘······ |
| Under the silver moon: | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Sleep, my little one, sleep, my pretty one, sleep. | 11 | ··/˘···/˘·· |
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.