Love's Last Gift
Love to his singer held a glistening leaf,And said: 'The rose-tree and the apple-treeHave fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee;And golden shafts are in the feathered sheafOf the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief,Victorious Summer; aye, and 'neath warm seaStrange secret grasses lurk inviolablyBetween the filtering channels of sunk reef.
All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of loveTo thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang;But Autumn stops to listen, with some pangFrom those worse things the wind is moaning of.Only this laurel dreads no winter days:Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.'
Words in this poem
- inviolably adv.
- Without violation.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Love's Last Gift 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, Love's Last Gift, in The House of Life (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3692, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rossetti-house-of-life/love-s-last-gift.html, id L20976.
Form and metre
Love's Last Gift is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
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 ABBAAB-A leafA · treeB · beeB · sheafA · chiefA · seaB · inviolably · reefA
- 2 ABBACC loveA · sangB · pangB · ofA · daysC · praiseC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Love to his singer held a glistening leaf, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And said: 'The rose-tree and the apple-tree | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Have fruits to vaunt or flowers to lure the bee; | 10 | ·····/···· |
| And golden shafts are in the feathered sheaf | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Of the great harvest-marshal, the year's chief, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Victorious Summer; aye, and 'neath warm sea | 10 | ˘/˘/˘····· |
| Strange secret grasses lurk inviolably | 11 | ·/˘/˘·˘/˘˘˘ |
| Between the filtering channels of sunk reef. | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| All are my blooms; and all sweet blooms of love | 10 | ·········· |
| To thee I gave while Spring and Summer sang; | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| But Autumn stops to listen, with some pang | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| From those worse things the wind is moaning of. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Only this laurel dreads no winter days: | 10 | /˘·/˘··/˘· |
| Take my last gift; thy heart hath sung my praise.' | 10 | ·········· |
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.