Fragment 85, tr. J. H. Merivale
I have a child, a lovely one,In beauty like the golden sun,Or like sweet flowers of earliest bloom;And Claïs is her name, for whomI Lydia's treasures, were they mine,Would glad resign.
About this text
Fragment 85, tr. J. H. Merivale is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation (ed. Henry Thornton Wharton, John Lane, 1908, fifth edition), Project Gutenberg ebook #57390, the Various (ed. H. T. Wharton) translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sappho, Fragment 85, tr. J. H. Merivale, in Sappho: Selected Renderings (1908), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #57390, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sappho-wharton/fr-85.html, id L29193.
Form and metre
Fragment 85, tr. J. H. Merivale is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AABBCC oneA · sunA · bloomB · whomB · mineC · resignC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I have a child, a lovely one, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| In beauty like the golden sun, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Or like sweet flowers of earliest bloom; | 8 | ···/·/˘· |
| And Claïs is her name, for whom | 7 | ······· |
| I Lydia's treasures, were they mine, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Would glad resign. | 4 | ··˘/ |
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.