Poem II
Whilest thus I looked, loe! adowne the leeI sawe an Harpe, stroong all with silver twyne,And made of golde and costlie yvorie,Swimming, that whilome seemed to have beenThe harpe on which Dan Orpheus was seeneWylde beasts and forrests after him to lead,But was th’harpe of Philisides** now dead.
At length out of the river it was reard,And borne above the cloudes to be divin’d,Whilst all the way most heavenly noyse was heardOf the strings, stirred with the warbling wind,That wrought both ioy and sorrow in my mind:So now in heaven a signe it doth appeare,The Harpe well knowne beside the Northern Beare.
Words in this poem
- golde n.
- An old English name of some yellow flower, -- the marigold (Calendula), according to Dr. Prior, but in Chaucer perhaps the turnsole.
- orpheus n.
- The famous mythic Thracian poet, son of the Muse Calliope, and husband of Eurydice. He is reputed to have had power to entrance beasts and inanimate objects by the music of his lyre.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Poem II is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5, Project Gutenberg ebook #10602; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edmund Spenser, Poem II, in Amoretti and Epithalamion, and Other Poems (1595), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10602, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/spenser-amoretti/poem-ii-2.html, id L23744.
Form and metre
Poem II is 14 lines in 2 stanzas of 7 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
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 ---AABB lee · twyne · yvorie · beenA · seeneA · leadB · deadB
- 2 ABABBCC reardA · divin'dB · heardA · windB · mindB · appeareC · beareC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Whilest thus I looked, loe! adowne the lee | 10 | /˘········ |
| I sawe an Harpe, stroong all with silver twyne, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And made of golde and costlie yvorie, | 10 | ·········· |
| Swimming, that whilome seemed to have been | 10 | /˘····˘··· |
| The harpe on which Dan Orpheus was seene | 10 | ·····/˘˘·· |
| Wylde beasts and forrests after him to lead, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| But was th’harpe of Philisides** now dead. | 9 | ········· |
| At length out of the river it was reard, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And borne above the cloudes to be divin’d, | 10 | ·········· |
| Whilst all the way most heavenly noyse was heard | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Of the strings, stirred with the warbling wind, | 10 | ······/˘˘· |
| That wrought both ioy and sorrow in my mind: | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| So now in heaven a signe it doth appeare, | 10 | ···/······ |
| The Harpe well knowne beside the Northern Beare. | 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.