The Village Dance
Wide the lime-tree to the airSpreads her boughs and foliage fair;Thyme beneath is growingOn the verdant meadow-whereDancers' feet are going.
Through the grass a little springRuns with jocund murmuring;All the place rejoices;Cooling zephyrs breathe and singWith their summer voices.
Words in this poem
- jocund
- Merry; cheerful; gay; airy; lively; sportive. [L. jocundus, jucundus, orig., helpful, fr. juvare to help. See Aid.]
- cooling a.
- Adapted to cool and refresh; allaying heat.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Village Dance is in the public domain. This text is taken from Wine, Women, and Song Mediaeval Latin Students' songs; Now first translated into English verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #18044; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Addington Symonds, The Village Dance, in Wine, Women and Song (1884), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18044, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/symonds-wine-women/the-village-dance.html, id L11826.
Form and metre
The Village Dance is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABAB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.6 syllables. 5 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 50% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
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 AABAB airA · fairA · growingB · whereA · goingB
- 2 AABAB springA · murmuringA · rejoicesB · singA · voicesB
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Wide the lime-tree to the air | 7 | ······· |
| Spreads her boughs and foliage fair; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Thyme beneath is growing | 6 | ····/˘ |
| On the verdant meadow-where | 7 | ··/˘/·· |
| Dancers' feet are going. | 6 | /˘··/˘ |
| Through the grass a little spring | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Runs with jocund murmuring; | 7 | ··/˘/˘˘ |
| All the place rejoices; | 6 | ···˘/˘ |
| Cooling zephyrs breathe and sing | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| With their summer voices. | 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.