Advice to a Grass-Blade
Thin and dark green symbolOf an earth forever raisingMyriads of chained wings,Breezes have a form, to you,And sounds break into vivid shape.The proud finality of tiny sightCannot lure your pliant blindness.
Thin and dark green blade,Be not awed by trees and menWhose sound is all that gives them life.You reach the sky because your faceIs not turned toward it.
Words in this poem
- finality n.
- The state of being final, finished, or complete; a final or conclusive arrangement; a settlement. Baxter. [L. finalitas the being last.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Advice to a Grass-Blade 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 Grass-Blade, in Advice: A Book of Poems (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60252, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bodenheim-advice/advice-to-a-grass-blade.html, id L23378.
Form and metre
Advice to a Grass-Blade is 12 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%).
See 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Thin and dark green symbol | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Of an earth forever raising | 8 | ···˘/˘/˘ |
| Myriads of chained wings, | 6 | /˘˘··· |
| Breezes have a form, to you, | 7 | /˘····· |
| And sounds break into vivid shape. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The proud finality of tiny sight | 9 | ··˘/˘·/˘· |
| Cannot lure your pliant blindness. | 8 | /˘··/˘/˘ |
| Thin and dark green blade, | 5 | ····· |
| Be not awed by trees and men | 7 | ······· |
| Whose sound is all that gives them life. | 8 | ········ |
| You reach the sky because your face | 8 | ········ |
| Is not turned toward it. | 6 | ······ |
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.