Advice to a Butter-Cup
Undistinguished butter-cupLost among myriads of others,To the red ant eyeing youYou are giant stillness.He pauses on the boulder of a clod,Baffled by your nearness to the sky.But to the black loam at your feetYou are the atom of a pent-up dream.
Undistinguished butter-cup,Take your little breath of contemplation,Undisturbed by haughty tricks of space.
Words in this poem
- stillness n.
- The quality or state of being still; quietness; silence; calmness; inactivity.
- boulder n.
- A large stone, worn smooth or rounded by the action of water; a large pebble. [Cf. Sw. bullra to roar, rattle, Dan. buldre, dial. Sw. bullersteen larger kind of pebbles; perh. akin to E. bellow.]
- clod n.
- A lump or mass, especially of earth, turf, or clay. [OE. clodde, latter form of clot. See Clot.]
- haughty a.
- High; lofty; bold. [OE. hautein, F. hautain, fr. haut high, OF. also halt, fr. L. altus. See Altitude.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Advice to a Butter-Cup is in the public domain. This text is taken from Advice: A Book of Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #60252; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Maxwell Bodenheim, Advice to a Butter-Cup, in Advice: A Book of Poems (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60252, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bodenheim-advice/advice-to-a-butter-cup.html, id L23365.
Form and metre
Advice to a Butter-Cup is 11 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in trochaic pentameter.
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.
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Undistinguished butter-cup | 7 | ·˘/˘/˘· |
| Lost among myriads of others, | 9 | ···/˘˘·/˘ |
| To the red ant eyeing you | 7 | ····/˘· |
| You are giant stillness. | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| He pauses on the boulder of a clod, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Baffled by your nearness to the sky. | 9 | /˘··/˘··· |
| But to the black loam at your feet | 8 | ········ |
| You are the atom of a pent-up dream. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Undistinguished butter-cup, | 7 | ·˘/˘/˘· |
| Take your little breath of contemplation, | 10 | ··/˘···˘/˘ |
| Undisturbed by haughty tricks of space. | 9 | ·˘/·/˘··· |
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.