To a Friend
Your head is steel cut into drooping linesThat make a mask satirically meek:Your face is like a tired devil weakFrom drinking many vague and unsought wines.The sullen skepticism of your eyesFor ever trying to transcend itself,Is often entered by a wistful elfWho sits naïvely unperturbed and wise.
And this same remnant, with its youthful wilesHeld curiously apart from blasphemies,Twirls starlight shivers out upon your sneersAnd changes them to little, startled smiles.And all your insolence drops to its kneesBefore the half-won grandeur of past years.
Words in this poem
- sullen a.
- Lonely; solitary; desolate. Wyclif (Job iii. 14). [OE. solein, solain, lonely, sullen; through Old French fr. (assumed) LL. solanus solitary, fr. L. solus alone. See Sole, a.]
- transcend v. i.
- To climb; to mount.
- wistful a.
- Longing; wishful; desirous. [For wishful; perhaps influenced by wistly, which is probably corrupted from OE. wisly certainly (from Icel. viss certain, akin to E. wit). See Wish.]
- curiously adv.
- In a curious manner.
- starlight n.
- The light given by the stars.
- insolence n.
- The quality of being unusual or novel. [F. insolence, L. insolentia. See Insolent.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To a Friend 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, To a Friend, in Advice: A Book of Poems (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60252, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bodenheim-advice/to-a-friend.html, id L23372.
Form and metre
To a Friend is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
See other poems in iambic 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.
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 ABBACDDC linesA · meekB · weakB · winesA · eyesC · itselfD · elfD · wiseC
- 2 ABCABC wilesA · blasphemiesB · sneersC · smilesA · kneesB · yearsC
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Your head is steel cut into drooping lines | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| That make a mask satirically meek: | 10 | ·········· |
| Your face is like a tired devil weak | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| From drinking many vague and unsought wines. | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| The sullen skepticism of your eyes | 10 | ·/˘/˘·˘··· |
| For ever trying to transcend itself, | 10 | ·/˘/˘·˘/˘/ |
| Is often entered by a wistful elf | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Who sits naïvely unperturbed and wise. | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| And this same remnant, with its youthful wiles | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Held curiously apart from blasphemies, | 11 | ·/˘˘˘˘/·/˘˘ |
| Twirls starlight shivers out upon your sneers | 10 | ·/·/˘····· |
| And changes them to little, startled smiles. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| And all your insolence drops to its knees | 10 | ···/˘˘···· |
| Before the half-won grandeur of past years. | 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.