Maid of Athens, ere we part, Give, oh give me back my heart! Or, since that has left my breast, Keep it now, and take the rest! Hear my vow before I go, Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ. By those tresses unconfined, Wooed by each Ægean wind; By those lids whose jetty fringe Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge; By those wild eyes like the roe, Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ. By that lip I long to taste; By that zone-encircled waist; By all the token-flowers that tell What words can never speak so well; By love's alternate joy and woe, Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ. Maid of Athens! I am gone: Think of me, sweet! when alone. Though I fly to Istambol, Athens holds my heart and soul: Can I cease to love thee? No! Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.
In Shakespeare’s day, “wind” and “unconfined” certainly would have rhymed: phonetic transcripts reveal that “wind” had the same diphthong as in words like mind, find, and blind. With the passage of time, the modern pronunciation increasingly gained the ascendency. John Walker, in his Pronouncing Dictionary of 1791, gives two pronunciations for “wind,” both the modern one, and the one that agrees with that of Shakespeare’s day; but he adds that the modern pronunciation, although “long contending for superiority,” now “seems to have gained a complete victory.” Byron published “The Maid of Athens” a couple of decades after Walker wrote this, and the modern pronunciation of “wind” must have become even more common in his own day. But poets have always been happy to use so-called “allowable” rhymes, rhymes which, although no longer truly rhymes, have become customary in the language, because of the practice of previous poets. Whether a poet would have bent their pronunciation to make “allowable” rhymes truly rhyme in delivery is generally unclear, so that whether or not we choose to do so in reciting their works is (in my opinion) largely a matter of taste. To speak for myself, I use the archaic pronunciation when I prefer harmony, and the modern one when I prefer perspicuity.
One of my very favorite poems. Beautifully done!
Beautiful done ❤
Beautiful
Maid of Athens, ere we part,
Give, oh give me back my heart!
Or, since that has left my breast,
Keep it now, and take the rest!
Hear my vow before I go,
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.
By those tresses unconfined,
Wooed by each Ægean wind;
By those lids whose jetty fringe
Kiss thy soft cheeks' blooming tinge;
By those wild eyes like the roe,
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.
By that lip I long to taste;
By that zone-encircled waist;
By all the token-flowers that tell
What words can never speak so well;
By love's alternate joy and woe,
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.
Maid of Athens! I am gone:
Think of me, sweet! when alone.
Though I fly to Istambol,
Athens holds my heart and soul:
Can I cease to love thee? No!
Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ.
❤❤️❤️✝️
Could it be that unconfined and wind used to rhyme back then?
In Shakespeare’s day, “wind” and “unconfined” certainly would have rhymed: phonetic transcripts reveal that “wind” had the same diphthong as in words like mind, find, and blind. With the passage of time, the modern pronunciation increasingly gained the ascendency. John Walker, in his Pronouncing Dictionary of 1791, gives two pronunciations for “wind,” both the modern one, and the one that agrees with that of Shakespeare’s day; but he adds that the modern pronunciation, although “long contending for superiority,” now “seems to have gained a complete victory.”
Byron published “The Maid of Athens” a couple of decades after Walker wrote this, and the modern pronunciation of “wind” must have become even more common in his own day. But poets have always been happy to use so-called “allowable” rhymes, rhymes which, although no longer truly rhymes, have become customary in the language, because of the practice of previous poets. Whether a poet would have bent their pronunciation to make “allowable” rhymes truly rhyme in delivery is generally unclear, so that whether or not we choose to do so in reciting their works is (in my opinion) largely a matter of taste. To speak for myself, I use the archaic pronunciation when I prefer harmony, and the modern one when I prefer perspicuity.