The Vow to Cupid
Winter, now thy spite is spent,Frost and ice and branches bent!Fogs and furious storms are o'er,Sloth and torpor, sorrow frore,Pallid wrath, lean discontent.
Comes the graceful band of May!Cloudless shines the limpid day,Shine by night the Pleiades;While a grateful summer breezeMakes the season soft and gay.
Golden Love I shine forth to view!Souls of stubborn men subdue!See me bend! what is thy mind?Make the girl thou givest kind,And a leaping ram's thy due!
O the jocund face of earth,Breathing with young grassy birth!Every tree with foliage clad,Singing birds in greenwood glad,Flowering fields for lovers' mirth!
Words in this poem
- cloudless a.
- Without a cloud; clear; bright.
- pleiades n.
- The seven daughters of Atlas and the nymph Pleione, fabled to have been made by Jupiter a constellation in the sky.
- jocund
- Merry; cheerful; gay; airy; lively; sportive. [L. jocundus, jucundus, orig., helpful, fr. juvare to help. See Aid.]
- clad v.
- To clothe. Holland.
- greenwood n.
- A forest as it appears is spring and summer.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Vow to Cupid 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 Vow to Cupid, in Wine, Women and Song (1884), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18044, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/symonds-wine-women/the-vow-to-cupid.html, id L11816.
Form and metre
The Vow to Cupid is 20 lines in 4 stanzas of 5 lines each. The rhyme scheme is AABBA, complete in 3 of its 4 stanzas; the stanza is the Limerick. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 99% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 5% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other limericks, 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 AA--A spentA · bentA · o'er · frore · discontentA
- 2 AABBA mayA · dayA · pleiadesB · breezeB · gayA
- 3 AABBA viewA · subdueA · mindB · kindB · dueA
- 4 AABBA earthA · birthA · cladB · gladB · mirthA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Winter, now thy spite is spent, | 7 | /˘····· |
| Frost and ice and branches bent! | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Fogs and furious storms are o'er, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Sloth and torpor, sorrow frore, | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| Pallid wrath, lean discontent. | 7 | /˘··˘˘/ |
| Comes the graceful band of May! | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Cloudless shines the limpid day, | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Shine by night the Pleiades; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| While a grateful summer breeze | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| Makes the season soft and gay. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Golden Love I shine forth to view! | 8 | /˘······ |
| Souls of stubborn men subdue! | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| See me bend! what is thy mind? | 7 | ······· |
| Make the girl thou givest kind, | 7 | ······· |
| And a leaping ram's thy due! | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| O the jocund face of earth, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Breathing with young grassy birth! | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Every tree with foliage clad, | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Singing birds in greenwood glad, | 7 | /˘··/·· |
| Flowering fields for lovers' mirth! | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
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.