To My Rose
Bright queen of flowers, O! Rose, gay blooming,How lovely are thy charms to me!Narcissus proud, pink unassuming,In beauty vainly vie with thee;When thou midst Flora's circle shinest,Each seems thy slave confessed to sigh,And thou, O! loveliest flower, divinest,Allur'st alone the passer's eye.
To change thy fate the thought has struck me,Sweet Rose, in beauty, ah! how blest,For fair Eliza I will pluck thee,And thou shalt deck her virgin breast:--Yet, there thy beauties vainly shining,No more predominance will claim,To lilies, all thy pride resigning,Thou'lt yield without dispute thy fame.
Words in this poem
- narcissus n.
- A genus of endogenous bulbous plants with handsome flowers, having a cup-shaped crown within the six-lobed perianth, and comprising the daffodils and jonquils of several kinds. [L. narcissus, and (personified) Narcissus, Gr. na`rkissos, Na`rkissos, fr. na`rkh torpor, in allusion to the narcotic properties of the flower. Cf. Narcotic.]
- unassuming a.
- Not assuming; not bold or forward; not arrogant or presuming; humble; modest; retiring; as, an unassuming youth; unassuming manners.
- shalt
- 2d per. sing. of Shall.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To My Rose is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #8192; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Alexander Pushkin, To My Rose, in The Bakchesarian Fountain and Other Poems (1849), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8192, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pushkin-bakchesarian/to-my-rose.html, id L25564.
Form and metre
To My Rose is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
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.
- 1 ABAB-C-C bloomingA · meB · unassumingA · theeB · shinest · sighC · divinest · eyeC
- 2 ABABCDCD meA · blestB · theeA · breastB · shiningC · claimD · resigningC · fameD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Bright queen of flowers, O! Rose, gay blooming, | 9 | ···/···/˘ |
| How lovely are thy charms to me! | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Narcissus proud, pink unassuming, | 9 | ˘/˘···˘/˘ |
| In beauty vainly vie with thee; | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| When thou midst Flora's circle shinest, | 9 | ···/˘/˘/˘ |
| Each seems thy slave confessed to sigh, | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| And thou, O! loveliest flower, divinest, | 10 | ······/˘/˘ |
| Allur'st alone the passer's eye. | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| To change thy fate the thought has struck me, | 9 | ········· |
| Sweet Rose, in beauty, ah! how blest, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| For fair Eliza I will pluck thee, | 9 | ··˘/˘···· |
| And thou shalt deck her virgin breast:-- | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Yet, there thy beauties vainly shining, | 9 | ···/˘/˘/˘ |
| No more predominance will claim, | 8 | ··˘/˘˘·· |
| To lilies, all thy pride resigning, | 9 | ·/˘···˘/˘ |
| Thou'lt yield without dispute thy fame. | 8 | ····˘/·· |
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.