Master or Slave
Lo, this land that lifts around itThreatening peaks, while stern seas bound it,With cold winters, summers bleak,Curtly smiling, never meek,'Tis the giant we must master,Till he work our will the faster.He shall carry, though he clamor,He shall haul and saw and hammer,Turn to light the tumbling torrent,--All his din and rage abhorrentShall, if we but do our duty,Win for us a realm of beauty.
Words in this poem
- curtly adv.
- In a curt manner.
- 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,]
- abhorrent a.
- Abhorring; detesting; having or showing abhorrence; loathing; hence, strongly opposed to; as, abhorrent thoughts. [L. abhorens, -rentis, p. pr. of abhorrere.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Master or Slave is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems and Songs, Project Gutenberg ebook #6619, the Arthur Hubbell Palmer translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Master or Slave, in Poems and Songs (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6619, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bjornson-poems-and-songs/master-or-slave.html, id L29352.
Form and metre
Master or Slave is 12 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, 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 AABBCCDDEEFF itA · itA · bleakB · meekB · masterC · fasterC · clamorD · hammerD · torrentE · abhorrentE · dutyF · beautyF
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Lo, this land that lifts around it | 8 | ········ |
| Threatening peaks, while stern seas bound it, | 8 | /˘······ |
| With cold winters, summers bleak, | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| Curtly smiling, never meek, | 7 | /˘/˘/˘· |
| 'Tis the giant we must master, | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| Till he work our will the faster. | 9 | ···/˘··/˘ |
| He shall carry, though he clamor, | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| He shall haul and saw and hammer, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Turn to light the tumbling torrent,-- | 9 | ····/˘˘/˘ |
| All his din and rage abhorrent | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| Shall, if we but do our duty, | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| Win for us a realm of beauty. | 8 | ······/˘ |
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.