Fragment: Love's Tender Atmosphere

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) · 1816–1819

iambic pentameter · 5 lines · from The Complete Poetical Works, Volume II

There is a warm and gentle atmosphereAbout the form of one we love, and thusAs in a tender mist our spirits areWrapped in the ... of that which is to usThe health of life's own life--

About this text

Fragment: Love's Tender Atmosphere 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, Fragment: Love's Tender Atmosphere, in The Complete Poetical Works, Volume II (1816–1819), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4798, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/shelley-later-poems/fragment-love-s-tender-atmosphere.html, id L16369.

Form and metre

Fragment: Love's Tender Atmosphere 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. 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.2 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. 1 -A-A- atmosphere · thusA · are · usA · life
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.

LineSyl.Stress
There is a warm and gentle atmosphere10·····/˘/˘·
About the form of one we love, and thus10··········
As in a tender mist our spirits are10···/˘·//˘·
Wrapped in the ... of that which is to us10·˘········
The health of life's own life--6······

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.

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