O Darling Room
O darling room, my heart’s delight,Dear room, the apple of my sight,With thy two couches soft and white,There is no room so exquisite,No little room so warm and bright,Wherein to read, wherein to write.
For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,And Oberwinter’s vineyards green,Musical Lurlei; and betweenThe hills to Bingen have I been,Bingen in Darmstadt, where the RheneCurves towards Mentz, a woody scene.
Yet never did there meet my sight,In any town, to left or right,A little room so exquisite,With two such couches soft and white;Not any room so warm and bright,Wherein to read, wherein to write.
About this text
O Darling Room is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Project Gutenberg ebook #8601; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Alfred Tennyson, O Darling Room, in The Early Poems (1830–1842), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8601, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tennyson-early-poems/o-darling-room.html, id L16608.
Form and metre
O Darling Room is 18 lines in 3 stanzas of 6 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 11% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic 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 AAAAAA delightA · sightA · whiteA · exquisiteA · brightA · writeA
- 2 AAAAAA seenA · greenA · betweenA · beenA · rheneA · sceneA
- 3 AAAAAA sightA · rightA · exquisiteA · whiteA · brightA · writeA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O darling room, my heart’s delight, | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Dear room, the apple of my sight, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| With thy two couches soft and white, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| There is no room so exquisite, | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| No little room so warm and bright, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Wherein to read, wherein to write. | 8 | ········ |
| For I the Nonnenwerth have seen, | 8 | ········ |
| And Oberwinter’s vineyards green, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Musical Lurlei; and between | 8 | /˘˘····· |
| The hills to Bingen have I been, | 8 | ········ |
| Bingen in Darmstadt, where the Rhene | 8 | ···/···· |
| Curves towards Mentz, a woody scene. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Yet never did there meet my sight, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| In any town, to left or right, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| A little room so exquisite, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘˘ |
| With two such couches soft and white; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Not any room so warm and bright, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Wherein to read, wherein to write. | 8 | ········ |
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.