To Sleep I give my powers away
To Sleep I give my powers away;My will is bondsman to the dark;I sit within a helmless bark,And with my heart I muse and say:
‘O heart, how fares it with thee now,That thou should’st fail from thy desire,Who scarcely darest to inquireWhat is it makes me beat so low?’
Something it is which thou hast lost,Some pleasure from thine early years.Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,That grief hath shaken into frost!
Such clouds of nameless trouble crossAll night below the darken’d eyes;With morning wakes the will, and cries,‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.’
Words in this poem
- bondsman n.
- A slave; a villain; a serf; a bondman. [Bond,a.orn.+ man.]
- helmless a.
- Destitute of a helmet.
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- nameless a.
- Without a name; not having been given a name; as, a nameless star.
- shalt
- 2d per. sing. of Shall.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To Sleep I give my powers away 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, To Sleep I give my powers away, in In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70950, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tennyson-in-memoriam/section-4.html, id L18364.
Form and metre
To Sleep I give my powers away 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 91%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end. Rhymes that have moved apart since the poem was written: love / prove, come / home, on / one.
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 awayA · darkB · barkB · sayA
- 2 ABBA nowA · desireB · inquireB · lowA
- 3 ABBA lostA · yearsB · tearsB · frostA
- 4 ABBA crossA · eyesB · criesB · lossA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| To Sleep I give my powers away; | 8 | ·····/˘/ |
| My will is bondsman to the dark; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| I sit within a helmless bark, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And with my heart I muse and say: | 8 | ········ |
| ‘O heart, how fares it with thee now, | 8 | ········ |
| That thou should’st fail from thy desire, | 9 | ······˘/˘ |
| Who scarcely darest to inquire | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| What is it makes me beat so low?’ | 8 | ········ |
| Something it is which thou hast lost, | 8 | /˘······ |
| Some pleasure from thine early years. | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| That grief hath shaken into frost! | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Such clouds of nameless trouble cross | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| All night below the darken’d eyes; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| With morning wakes the will, and cries, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| ‘Thou shalt not be the fool of loss.’ | 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.