Fragment 88, tr. Michael Field (1889)
Ah, Procne, wherefore dost thou weary me?Thus flitting out and flitting in ...Tease not the air with this tumultuous wing.
Words in this poem
- wherefore adv.
- For which reason; so; -- used relatively. [Where + for.]
- flitting n.
- A flying with lightness and celerity; a fluttering.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Fragment 88, tr. Michael Field (1889) 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 88, tr. Michael Field (1889), in Sappho: Selected Renderings (1908), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #57390, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sappho-wharton/fr-88.html, id L29194.
Form and metre
Fragment 88, tr. Michael Field (1889) is 3 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Ah, Procne, wherefore dost thou weary me? | 9 | ··/˘··/˘· |
| Thus flitting out and flitting in ... | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Tease not the air with this tumultuous wing. | 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.