On Mrs. W—-'s Voyage to England I
WHILE raging tempests shake the shore,While AElus' thunders round us roar,And sweep impetuous o'er the plainBe still, O tyrant of the main;Nor let thy brow contracted frowns betray,While my Susanna skims the wat'ry way.
About this text
On Mrs. W—-'s Voyage to England I is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems on various subjects, religious and moral, Project Gutenberg ebook #409; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Phillis Wheatley, On Mrs. W—-'s Voyage to England I, in Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #409, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/wheatley-poems/on-mrs-w-s-voyage-to-england-i.html, id L07714.
Form and metre
On Mrs. W—-'s Voyage to England I is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.7 syllables.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AABBCC shoreA · roarA · plainB · mainB · betrayC · wayC
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 raging tempests shake the shore, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| While AElus' thunders round us roar, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And sweep impetuous o'er the plain | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| Be still, O tyrant of the main; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Nor let thy brow contracted frowns betray, | 10 | ····/˘˘·˘/ |
| While my Susanna skims the wat'ry way. | 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.