Love-Sweetness
Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfallAbout thy face; her sweet hands round thy headIn gracious fostering union garlanded,Her tremulous smiles, her glances' sweet recallOf love; her murmuring sighs memorial;Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shedOn cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so ledBack to her mouth which answers there for all:--
What sweeter than these things, except the thingIn lacking which all these would lose their sweet:--The confident heart's still fervour: the swift beatAnd soft subsidence of the spirit's wing,Then when it feels, in cloud--girt wayfaring,The breath of kindred plumes against its feet?
Words in this poem
- downfall n.
- A sudden fall; a body of things falling.
- fervour n.
- Heat; excessive warmth. [OF. fervor, fervour, F. ferveur, L. fervor, fr. fervere. See Fervent.]
- girt v. t.
- To gird; to encircle; to invest by means of a girdle; to measure the girth of; as, to girt a tree. [From Girt, n., cf. Girth, v.]
- wayfaring a.
- Traveling; passing; being on a journey.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Love-Sweetness 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-Sweetness, in The House of Life (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3692, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rossetti-house-of-life/love-sweetness.html, id L20941.
Form and metre
Love-Sweetness is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
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 downfallA · headB · garlandedB · recallA · memorialA · shedB · ledB · allA
- 2 ABBAAB thingA · sweetB · beatB · wingA · wayfaringA · feetB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Sweet dimness of her loosened hair's downfall | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·/· |
| About thy face; her sweet hands round thy head | 10 | ·········· |
| In gracious fostering union garlanded, | 11 | ·/˘/˘˘/˘/˘˘ |
| Her tremulous smiles, her glances' sweet recall | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·˘/ |
| Of love; her murmuring sighs memorial; | 11 | ···/˘˘·˘/˘˘ |
| Her mouth's culled sweetness by thy kisses shed | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| On cheeks and neck and eyelids, and so led | 10 | ·····/···· |
| Back to her mouth which answers there for all:-- | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| What sweeter than these things, except the thing | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| In lacking which all these would lose their sweet:-- | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| The confident heart's still fervour: the swift beat | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| And soft subsidence of the spirit's wing, | 10 | ··˘/˘··/˘· |
| Then when it feels, in cloud--girt wayfaring, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| The breath of kindred plumes against its feet? | 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.