Rhythms
Sing low my soul—To tear and biteIs but the madness of the beast.Blow on thy wrath,Burst not thy bands,Be quiet,Wait until thy moment comes.
Sweet in their meaning break the allied winds.Now all the tiny muscles play the tune.Man, strike to kill,Rise now to sing,Now throw the shaft against the wall of time.
Deep in my old valley lies the naked man.He is a seed,Seeds sleep in him.My man shall be the father of a tribe, a race.He is the world and all the world has been asleep in him.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Rhythms is in the public domain. This text is taken from Mid-American Chants (New York: John Lane Company; London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1918), Internet Archive; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sherwood Anderson, Rhythms, in Mid-American Chants (1918), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/anderson-mid-american-chants/rhythms.html, id L29479.
Form and metre
Rhythms is 17 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
See other poems in iambic dimeter.
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---A- soul · biteA · beast · wrath · bands · quietA · comes
- 3 --A-A man · seed · himA · race · himA
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 dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sing low my soul— | 4 | ···· |
| To tear and bite | 4 | ···· |
| Is but the madness of the beast. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Blow on thy wrath, | 4 | ···· |
| Burst not thy bands, | 4 | ···· |
| Be quiet, | 3 | ·/˘ |
| Wait until thy moment comes. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Sweet in their meaning break the allied winds. | 10 | ···/˘··˘/· |
| Now all the tiny muscles play the tune. | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Man, strike to kill, | 4 | ···· |
| Rise now to sing, | 4 | ···· |
| Now throw the shaft against the wall of time. | 10 | ·········· |
| Deep in my old valley lies the naked man. | 11 | ····/˘··/˘· |
| He is a seed, | 4 | ···· |
| Seeds sleep in him. | 4 | ···· |
| My man shall be the father of a tribe, a race. | 12 | ·····/˘····· |
| He is the world and all the world has been asleep in him. | 14 | ··········˘/·· |
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.