The Flight of Youth
Youth! ere thou be flown away.Surely one last boon to-dayThou'lt bestow--One last light of rapture give,Rich and lordly fugitive!Ere thou go.
What, thou canst not? What, all spent?All thy spells of ravishmentPow'rless now?Gone thy magic out of date?Gone, all gone that made thee great?--Follow thou!
Words in this poem
- flown a.
- Flushed, inflated.
- boon n.
- A prayer or petition. [OE. bone, boin, a petition, fr. Icel. b; akin to Sw. & Dan. b, AS. b, and perh. to E. ban; but influenced by F. bon good, fr. L. bonus. Ban, Bounty.]
- ravishment n.
- The act of carrying away by force or against consent; abduction; as, the ravishment of children from their parents, or a ward from his guardian, or of a wife from her husband. Blackstone. [F. ravissement. See Ravish.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Flight of Youth is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of William Watson, Project Gutenberg ebook #13179; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Watson, The Flight of Youth, in The Poems of William Watson (1892–1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13179, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/watson-poems/the-flight-of-youth.html, id L11251.
Form and metre
The Flight of Youth is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABCCB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 97%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.7 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 17% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic 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 AABCCB awayA · dayA · bestowB · giveC · fugitiveC · goB
- 2 AABCCB spentA · ravishmentA · nowB · dateC · greatC · thouB
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Youth! ere thou be flown away. | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Surely one last boon to-day | 7 | /˘····· |
| Thou'lt bestow-- | 3 | ·˘/ |
| One last light of rapture give, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Rich and lordly fugitive! | 7 | ··/˘/˘˘ |
| Ere thou go. | 3 | ··· |
| What, thou canst not? What, all spent? | 7 | ······· |
| All thy spells of ravishment | 7 | ····/˘˘ |
| Pow'rless now? | 3 | ··· |
| Gone thy magic out of date? | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Gone, all gone that made thee great?-- | 7 | ······· |
| Follow thou! | 3 | /˘· |
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.