Shelley
Knight-errant of the Never-ending Quest,And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire;For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyreTo some unearthly music, and possessedWith painful passionate longing to investThe golden dream of Love's immortal fireWith mortal robes of beautiful attire,And fold perfection to thy throbbing breast!
What wonder, Shelley, that the restless waveShould claim thee and the leaping flame consumeThy drifted form on Viareggio's beach?These were thine elements,--thy fitting grave.But still thy soul rides on with fiery plume,Thy wild song rings in ocean's yearning speech!
Words in this poem
- unearthly a.
- Not terrestrial; supernatural; preternatural; hence, weird; appalling; terrific; as, an unearthly sight or sound.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Shelley is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Henry Van Dyke, Project Gutenberg ebook #16229; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Van Dyke, Shelley, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/shelley.html, id L22958.
Form and metre
Shelley is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 AB-AABBA questA · desireB · lyre · possessedA · investA · fireB · attireB · breastA
- 2 ABCABC waveA · consumeB · beachC · graveA · plumeB · speechC
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Knight-errant of the Never-ending Quest, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| And Minstrel of the Unfulfilled Desire; | 11 | ·/˘···˘/˘/˘ |
| For ever tuning thy frail earthly lyre | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| To some unearthly music, and possessed | 10 | ··˘/˘/˘·˘/ |
| With painful passionate longing to invest | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘·˘/ |
| The golden dream of Love's immortal fire | 11 | ·/˘···˘/˘/˘ |
| With mortal robes of beautiful attire, | 11 | ·/˘··/˘˘˘/˘ |
| And fold perfection to thy throbbing breast! | 10 | ··˘/˘··/˘· |
| What wonder, Shelley, that the restless wave | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Should claim thee and the leaping flame consume | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| Thy drifted form on Viareggio's beach? | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| These were thine elements,--thy fitting grave. | 10 | ···/˘˘·/˘· |
| But still thy soul rides on with fiery plume, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Thy wild song rings in ocean's yearning speech! | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
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.