Smiles
Smiles are the words beyond the wordsThat thoughts abandon helplessly.Upon this nervous shop-girl’s face,Where clusters of tiny limpness meet,A frightened spark leaps high and dropsInto the hot pause of a banished love.A lustrelessly plumpGirl beside her does not knowThat her face for moments glowsInto a helpless solitude.Upon an old man’s faceAre gleams of meek embarrassment--The faded presence of some old debt?This woman’s face is scorchedBy a torch that falls from weary handsAnd makes her laugh an unheard lie.The face of this tamed spriteShimmers with an understandingOf the opaque loss she cannot bear,And I see that smiles are sometimesWords beyond the wordsThat thoughts abandon hopefully.
Words in this poem
- limpness n.
- The quality or state of being limp.
- unheard a.
- Not heard; not perceived by the ear; as, words unheard by those present.
- sprite n.
- A spirit; a soul; a shade; also, an apparition. See Spright. [OE. sprit, F. esprit, fr. L. spiritus. See Spirit, and cf. Sprightly.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Smiles 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, Smiles, in Advice: A Book of Poems (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60252, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bodenheim-advice/smiles.html, id L23386.
Form and metre
Smiles is 22 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
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 A-B-------B---------A- wordsA · helplessly · faceB · meet · drops · love · plump · know · glows · solitude · faceB · embarrassment · debt · scorched · hands · lie · sprite · understanding · bear · sometimes · wordsA · hopefully
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Smiles are the words beyond the words | 8 | ········ |
| That thoughts abandon helplessly. | 8 | ··˘/˘/˘˘ |
| Upon this nervous shop-girl’s face, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Where clusters of tiny limpness meet, | 9 | ·/˘·/˘/˘· |
| A frightened spark leaps high and drops | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Into the hot pause of a banished love. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| A lustrelessly plump | 6 | ······ |
| Girl beside her does not know | 7 | ·˘/···· |
| That her face for moments glows | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Into a helpless solitude. | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Upon an old man’s face | 6 | ······ |
| Are gleams of meek embarrassment-- | 8 | ····˘/˘˘ |
| The faded presence of some old debt? | 9 | ·/˘/˘···· |
| This woman’s face is scorched | 7 | ·/˘···˘ |
| By a torch that falls from weary hands | 9 | ······/˘· |
| And makes her laugh an unheard lie. | 8 | ·····˘/· |
| The face of this tamed sprite | 7 | ·····˘· |
| Shimmers with an understanding | 8 | /˘···˘/˘ |
| Of the opaque loss she cannot bear, | 9 | ··˘/··˘/· |
| And I see that smiles are sometimes | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Words beyond the words | 5 | ····· |
| That thoughts abandon hopefully. | 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.