New Year's Day
New Year, be good to England. Bid her nameShine sunlike as of old on all the sea:Make strong her soul: set all her spirit free:Bind fast her homeborn foes with links of shameMore strong than iron and more keen than flame:Seal up their lips for shame's sake: so shall sheWho was the light that lightened freedom be,For all false tongues, in all men's eyes the same.
O last-born child of Time, earth's eldest lord,God undiscrowned of godhead, who for manBegets all good and evil things that live,Do thou, his new-begotten son, imploredOf hearts that hope and fear not, make thy spanBright with such light as history bids thee give.
Words in this poem
- sunlike a.
- Like or resembling the sun.
- homeborn a.
- Native; indigenous; not foreign. Donne.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
New Year's Day is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems and Ballads (Third Series) Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles Swinburne—Vol. III, Project Gutenberg ebook #18726; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Algernon Charles Swinburne, New Year's Day, in Poems and Ballads (1866), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18726, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/swinburne-poems-ballads/new-year-s-day.html, id L07098.
Form and metre
New Year's Day is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables. 43% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 ABBAABBA nameA · seaB · freeB · shameA · flameA · sheB · beB · sameA
- 2 ABCABC lordA · manB · liveC · imploredA · spanB · giveC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| New Year, be good to England. Bid her name | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Shine sunlike as of old on all the sea: | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Make strong her soul: set all her spirit free: | 9 | ·······/· |
| Bind fast her homeborn foes with links of shame | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| More strong than iron and more keen than flame: | 9 | ···/····· |
| Seal up their lips for shame's sake: so shall she | 10 | ·········· |
| Who was the light that lightened freedom be, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| For all false tongues, in all men's eyes the same. | 10 | ·········· |
| O last-born child of Time, earth's eldest lord, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| God undiscrowned of godhead, who for man | 10 | ·····/···· |
| Begets all good and evil things that live, | 9 | ˘/···/··· |
| Do thou, his new-begotten son, implored | 10 | ····˘/˘·˘/ |
| Of hearts that hope and fear not, make thy span | 10 | ·········· |
| Bright with such light as history bids thee give. | 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.