The Danube to the Severn gave
The Danube to the Severn gaveThe darken’d heart that beat no more;They laid him by the pleasant shore,And in the hearing of the wave.
There twice a day the Severn fills,The salt sea-water passes by,And hushes half the babbling Wye,And makes a silence in the hills.
The Wye is hush’d nor moved along;And hush’d my deepest grief of all,When fill’d with tears that cannot fall,I brim with sorrow drowning song.
The tide flows down, the wave againIs vocal in its wooded walls:My deeper anguish also falls,And I can speak a little then.
About this text
The Danube to the Severn gave is in the public domain. This text is taken from In memoriam, Project Gutenberg ebook #70950; 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, The Danube to the Severn gave, in In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70950, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tennyson-in-memoriam/section-19.html, id L18379.
Form and metre
The Danube to the Severn gave is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See 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 ABBA gaveA · moreB · shoreB · waveA
- 2 ABBA fillsA · byB · wyeB · hillsA
- 3 ABBA alongA · allB · fallB · songA
- 4 ABBA againA · wallsB · fallsB · thenA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The Danube to the Severn gave | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| The darken’d heart that beat no more; | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| They laid him by the pleasant shore, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And in the hearing of the wave. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| There twice a day the Severn fills, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The salt sea-water passes by, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| And hushes half the babbling Wye, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And makes a silence in the hills. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The Wye is hush’d nor moved along; | 8 | ······˘/ |
| And hush’d my deepest grief of all, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| When fill’d with tears that cannot fall, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| I brim with sorrow drowning song. | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| The tide flows down, the wave again | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Is vocal in its wooded walls: | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| My deeper anguish also falls, | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| And I can speak a little then. | 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.