While I Listen to Thy Voice
While I listen to thy voice,Chloris! I feel my life decay;That powerful noiseCalls my fleeting soul away.Oh! suppress that magic sound,Which destroys without a wound.
Peace, Chloris! peace! or singing die,That together you and ITo heaven may go;For all we knowOf what the blessed do above,Is, that they sing, and that they love.
About this text
While I Listen to Thy Voice is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham, Project Gutenberg ebook #12322; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edmund Waller, While I Listen to Thy Voice, in Poetical Works (1645–1668), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waller-denham/while-i-listen-to-thy-voice.html, id L09110.
Form and metre
While I Listen to Thy Voice is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.7 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 -A-ABB voice · decayA · noise · awayA · soundB · woundB
- 2 AABBCC dieA · iA · goB · knowB · aboveC · loveC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| While I listen to thy voice, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Chloris! I feel my life decay; | 8 | /˘····˘/ |
| That powerful noise | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| Calls my fleeting soul away. | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| Oh! suppress that magic sound, | 7 | ·˘/·/˘· |
| Which destroys without a wound. | 7 | ·˘/···· |
| Peace, Chloris! peace! or singing die, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| That together you and I | 7 | ·˘/˘··· |
| To heaven may go; | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| For all we know | 4 | ···· |
| Of what the blessed do above, | 7 | ······· |
| Is, that they sing, and that they love. | 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.