Advice to a River Steam-Boat
The brass band plays upon your decks,Like a sturdy harlot aping mirth,And people in starched shieldsStuff their passions with sweet words,Life is swishing in the air,Like a tipsy, unseen bridegroom.
O humbly grunting river boat,Take the churning water and the sunLike one who plays with his own chainsAnd flings their turmoil to the sky.Only a voice can leap above high walls.
Words in this poem
- starched a.
- Stiffened with starch.
- unseen a.
- Not seen or discovered.
- bridegroom n.
- A man newly married, or just about to be married. [OE. bridegome, brudgume, AS. br (akin to OS. br, D. bruidegom, bruigom, OHG. pr, MHG. briutegome, G. bräutigam); AS. br bride + guma man, akin to Goth. guma, Ic]
- humbly adv.
- With humility; lowly.
- churning n.
- The act of one who churns.
- turmoil v. t.
- To harass with commotion; to disquiet; to worry.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Advice to a River Steam-Boat 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 River Steam-Boat, in Advice: A Book of Poems (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60252, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bodenheim-advice/advice-to-a-river-steam-boat.html, id L23366.
Form and metre
Advice to a River Steam-Boat is 11 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The brass band plays upon your decks, | 8 | ········ |
| Like a sturdy harlot aping mirth, | 9 | ··/˘/˘/˘· |
| And people in starched shields | 7 | ·/˘··˘· |
| Stuff their passions with sweet words, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Life is swishing in the air, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Like a tipsy, unseen bridegroom. | 8 | ··/˘˘//· |
| O humbly grunting river boat, | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| Take the churning water and the sun | 9 | ··/˘/˘··· |
| Like one who plays with his own chains | 8 | ········ |
| And flings their turmoil to the sky. | 8 | ···/···· |
| Only a voice can leap above high walls. | 10 | /˘········ |
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.