Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet,Rings Eden through the budded quicks,O tell me where the senses mix,O tell me where the passions meet,
Whence radiate: fierce extremes employThy spirits in the dusking leaf,And in the midmost heart of griefThy passion clasps a secret joy:
And I--my harp would prelude woe--I cannot all command the strings;The glory of the sum of thingsWill flash along the chords and go.
Words in this poem
- warble v. t.
- To sing in a trilling, quavering, or vibratory manner; to modulate with turns or variations; to trill; as, certain birds are remarkable for warbling their songs. [OE. werbelen, OF. werbler; of Teutonic origin; cf. G. wirbeln to turn, to warble, D. wervelen, akin to E. whirl. See Whirl.]
- eden n.
- The garden where Adam and Eve first dwelt; hence, a delightful region or residence. [Heb. eden delight, pleasure; also, a place of pleasure, Eden.]
- midmost a.
- Middle; middlemost. [OE. middemiste. Cf. Foremost.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet 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, Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, in In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70950, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tennyson-in-memoriam/section-86.html, id L18446.
Form and metre
Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet is 12 lines in 3 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. 25% 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 sweetA · quicksB · mixB · meetA
- 2 ABBA employA · leafB · griefB · joyA
- 3 ABBA woeA · stringsB · thingsB · goA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Wild bird, whose warble, liquid sweet, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Rings Eden through the budded quicks, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| O tell me where the senses mix, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| O tell me where the passions meet, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Whence radiate: fierce extremes employ | 8 | ·/˘·˘/˘/ |
| Thy spirits in the dusking leaf, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And in the midmost heart of grief | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Thy passion clasps a secret joy: | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And I--my harp would prelude woe-- | 8 | ·····/·· |
| I cannot all command the strings; | 8 | ·/˘·˘/·· |
| The glory of the sum of things | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Will flash along the chords and go. | 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.