Love Sleeping
Within the covert of a shady groveWe saw the little red-cheek'd god of Love:He had nor bow nor quiver: these amongThe neighbouring trees upon a bow were hung.Upon a bank of tender rosebuds laid,He smiling slept; bees with their noise invadeHis rest, and on his lips their honey made.
Words in this poem
- neighbouring a.
- Living or being near; adjacent; as, the neighboring nations or countries.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Love Sleeping is in the public domain. This text is taken from Thomas Stanley: His Original Lyrics, Complete, In Their Collated Readings of 1647, 1651, 1657. With an Introduction, Textual Notes, a List of Editions, an Appendix of Translations, and a Portrait., Project Gutenberg ebook #32986; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Thomas Stanley, Love Sleeping, in Original Lyrics (1651), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #32986, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stanley-lyrics/love-sleeping.html, id L09011.
Form and metre
Love Sleeping is 7 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 57% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 --AABBB grove · love · amongA · hungA · laidB · invadeB · madeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Within the covert of a shady grove | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| We saw the little red-cheek'd god of Love: | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| He had nor bow nor quiver: these among | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| The neighbouring trees upon a bow were hung. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Upon a bank of tender rosebuds laid, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| He smiling slept; bees with their noise invade | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| His rest, and on his lips their honey made. | 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.