When rosy plumelets tuft the larch
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch,And rarely pipes the mounted thrush;Or underneath the barren bushFlits by the sea-blue bird of March;
Come, wear the form by which I knowThy spirit in time among thy peers;The hope of unaccomplish’d yearsBe large and lucid round thy brow.
When summer’s hourly-mellowing changeMay breathe with many roses sweetUpon the thousand waves of wheat,That ripple round the lonely grange;
Come: not in watches of the night,But where the sunbeam broodeth warm,Come, beauteous in thine after form,And like a finer light in light.
Words in this poem
- grange n.
- A building for storing grain; a granary. [F. grange barn, LL. granea, from L. granum grain. See Grain a kernel.]
- sunbeam n.
- A beam or ray of the sun. [AS. sunnebeam.]
- beauteous a.
- Full of beauty; beautiful; very handsome. [Mostly poetic] -- Beau"te*ous*ly, adv. --
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch 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, When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, in In Memoriam A.H.H. (1850), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70950, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tennyson-in-memoriam/section-89.html, id L18449.
Form and metre
When rosy plumelets tuft the larch 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 93%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 31% 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 larchA · thrushB · bushB · marchA
- 2 ABBA knowA · peersB · yearsB · browA
- 3 ABBA changeA · sweetB · wheatB · grangeA
- 4 ABBA nightA · warmB · formB · lightA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When rosy plumelets tuft the larch, | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| And rarely pipes the mounted thrush; | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Or underneath the barren bush | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| Flits by the sea-blue bird of March; | 8 | ········ |
| Come, wear the form by which I know | 8 | ········ |
| Thy spirit in time among thy peers; | 8 | ·/······ |
| The hope of unaccomplish’d years | 8 | ········ |
| Be large and lucid round thy brow. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| When summer’s hourly-mellowing change | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| May breathe with many roses sweet | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Upon the thousand waves of wheat, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| That ripple round the lonely grange; | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Come: not in watches of the night, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| But where the sunbeam broodeth warm, | 8 | ···/·/˘· |
| Come, beauteous in thine after form, | 9 | ·/˘˘····· |
| And like a finer light in light. | 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.