Antiphony
'I love you, sweet: how can you ever learnHow much I love you?' 'You I love even so,And so I learn it.' 'Sweet, you cannot knowHow fair you are.' 'If fair enough to earnYour love, so much is all my love's concern.''My love grows hourly, sweet.' 'Mine too doth grow,Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!'Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn.
Ah! happy they to whom such words as theseIn youth have served for speech the whole day long,Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng,Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas,--What while Love breathed in sighs and silencesThrough two blent souls one rapturous undersong.
Words in this poem
- hourly a.
- Happening or done every hour; occurring hour by hour; frequent; often repeated; renewed hour by hour; continual.
- blent p. p.
- Blinded. Also (Chaucer), 3d sing. pres. Blindeth.
- undersong n.
- The burden of a song; the chorus; the refrain.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Antiphony is in the public domain. This text is taken from The House of Life, Project Gutenberg ebook #3692; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Antiphony, in The House of Life (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3692, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rossetti-house-of-life/antiphony.html, id L20933.
Form and metre
Antiphony is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
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 ABBAABBA learnA · soB · knowB · earnA · concernA · growB · agoB · turnA
- 2 ABBAAB theseA · longB · throngB · pleasA · silencesA · undersongB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 'I love you, sweet: how can you ever learn | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| How much I love you?' 'You I love even so, | 10 | ········/· |
| And so I learn it.' 'Sweet, you cannot know | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| How fair you are.' 'If fair enough to earn | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| Your love, so much is all my love's concern.' | 10 | ········˘/ |
| 'My love grows hourly, sweet.' 'Mine too doth grow, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!' | 10 | ·····//˘˘/ |
| Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Ah! happy they to whom such words as these | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| In youth have served for speech the whole day long, | 10 | ·········· |
| Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng, | 10 | /··/˘/···· |
| Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas,-- | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| What while Love breathed in sighs and silences | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong. | 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.