Infant Sorrow
My mother groaned, my father wept:Into the dangerous world I leapt,Helpless, naked, piping loud,Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Struggling in my father's hands,Striving against my swaddling-bands,Bound and weary, I thought bestTo sulk upon my mother's breast.
Words in this poem
- piping a.
- Playing on a musical pipe. [From Pipe, v.]
- sulk v. i.
- To be silently sullen; to be morose or obstinate. T. Hook. [See Sulkiness.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Infant Sorrow is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of William Blake, Project Gutenberg ebook #574; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Blake, Infant Sorrow, in Poems of William Blake (1783–1794), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #574, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/blake-poems/infant-sorrow.html, id L02019.
Form and metre
Infant Sorrow is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 83% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See 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 AABB weptA · leaptA · loudB · cloudB
- 2 AABB handsA · bandsA · bestB · breastB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My mother groaned, my father wept: | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Into the dangerous world I leapt, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Helpless, naked, piping loud, | 8 | /˘/˘˘/˘· |
| Like a fiend hid in a cloud. | 7 | ······· |
| Struggling in my father's hands, | 8 | /˘˘··/˘· |
| Striving against my swaddling-bands, | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| Bound and weary, I thought best | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| To sulk upon my mother's breast. | 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.