On Mrs. W—-'s Voyage to England II
The Pow'r propitious hears the lay,The blue-ey'd daughters of the seaWith sweeter cadence glide along,And Thames responsive joins the song.Pleas'd with their notes Sol sheds benign his ray,And double radiance decks the face of day.
Words in this poem
- responsive a.
- That responds; ready or inclined to respond. [Cf. F. resposif.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
On Mrs. W—-'s Voyage to England II 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 II, 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-ii.html, id L07715.
Form and metre
On Mrs. W—-'s Voyage to England II is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 100% 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 A-BBAA layA · sea · alongB · songB · rayA · dayA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The Pow'r propitious hears the lay, | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| The blue-ey'd daughters of the sea | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| With sweeter cadence glide along, | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| And Thames responsive joins the song. | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| Pleas'd with their notes Sol sheds benign his ray, | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| And double radiance decks the face of day. | 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.