Cancelled Passage of Mont Blanc
There is a voice, not understood by all,Sent from these desert-caves. It is the roarOf the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call,Plunging into the vale--it is the blastDescending on the pines--the torrents pour...
Words in this poem
- vale n.
- A tract of low ground, or of land between hills; a valley. [OE. val, F. val, L. vallis; perhaps akin to Gr. Avalanche, Vail to lower, Valley.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Cancelled Passage of Mont Blanc is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #4798; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Cancelled Passage of Mont Blanc, in The Complete Poetical Works, Volume II (1816–1819), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4798, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/shelley-later-poems/cancelled-passage-of-mont-blanc.html, id L16307.
Form and metre
Cancelled Passage of Mont Blanc is 5 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
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 ABA-B allA · roarB · callA · blast · pourB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| There is a voice, not understood by all, | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| Sent from these desert-caves. It is the roar | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Of the rent ice-cliff which the sunbeams call, | 10 | ·······/·· |
| Plunging into the vale--it is the blast | 10 | /˘········ |
| Descending on the pines--the torrents pour... | 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.