Vaudeville Moment
They have carved a battleAcross your hard face:Transfigured conflict,Lines like suspended lances.Your voice must be the unevenClink of the last carver’s chisel.Your soul must be a pious subterfugeSquinting its admiring eyesAt the lifeless battle lining your face....Middle aged vaudeville conductor,With a hunted leanness on your body,Sometimes the swing of your batonSways with a brooding patienceThat violates your ended face.
Two acrobats appear,With their automaton bows.Their unlit motion does not strikeThe air into a hugging flame.They are blue and orange corpsesWhirled in a sacrilegious festival.They vividly resembleThe chiseled battle that gripsThis lean conductor’s face:Motion without life,And life that holds no motion!
Words in this poem
- clink v. t.
- To cause to give out a slight, sharp, tinkling, sound, as by striking metallic or other sonorous bodies together. [OE. clinken; akin to G. klingen, D. klinken, SW. klinga, Dan. klinge; prob. of imitative origin. Cf. Clank, Clench, Click, v. i.]
- subterfuge n.
- That to which one resorts for escape or concealment; an artifice employed to escape censure or the force of an argument, or to justify opinions or conduct; a shift; an evasion. [F., from LL. subterfugium, fr. L. subterfugere to flee secretly, to escape; subter under + fugere to flee. See Fugitive.]
- admiring a.
- Expressing admiration; as, an admiring glance.
- vaudeville n.
- A kind of song of a lively character, frequently embodying a satire on some person or event, sung to a familiar air in couplets with a refrain; a street song; a topical song. [F., fr. Vau-de-vire, a village in Normandy, where Olivier Basselin, at the end of the 14th century, composed such songs.]
- leanness n.
- The condition or quality of being lean. [AS. hlænnes.]
- automaton n.
- Any thing or being regarded as having the power of spontaneous motion or action. Huxley. [L. fr. Gr. ma, man, to strive, think, cf. Mean, v. i.]
- sacrilegious a.
- Violating sacred things; polluted with sacrilege; involving sacrilege; profane; impious. [From sacrilege: cf. L. sacrilegus.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Vaudeville Moment 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, Vaudeville Moment, in Advice: A Book of Poems (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60252, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bodenheim-advice/vaudeville-moment.html, id L23400.
Form and metre
Vaudeville Moment is 25 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
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---BA----A battle · faceA · conflict · lancesB · uneven · chisel · subterfuge · eyesB · faceA · conductor · body · baton · patience · faceA
- 2 -A--A------ appear · bowsA · strike · flame · corpsesA · festival · resemble · grips · face · life · motion
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 |
|---|---|---|
| They have carved a battle | 7 | ···˘·/˘ |
| Across your hard face: | 5 | ˘/··· |
| Transfigured conflict, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Lines like suspended lances. | 7 | ··˘/˘/˘ |
| Your voice must be the uneven | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| Clink of the last carver’s chisel. | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Your soul must be a pious subterfuge | 9 | ·····//˘· |
| Squinting its admiring eyes | 7 | /˘·˘/˘· |
| At the lifeless battle lining your face.... | 10 | ··/˘/˘/˘·· |
| Middle aged vaudeville conductor, | 8 | /˘·/˘˘/˘ |
| With a hunted leanness on your body, | 10 | ··/˘/˘··/˘ |
| Sometimes the swing of your baton | 8 | ˘/····˘/ |
| Sways with a brooding patience | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| That violates your ended face. | 8 | ·/˘˘·/˘· |
| Two acrobats appear, | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| With their automaton bows. | 7 | ··˘/˘·· |
| Their unlit motion does not strike | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The air into a hugging flame. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| They are blue and orange corpses | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Whirled in a sacrilegious festival. | 9 | ····˘/˘/˘ |
| They vividly resemble | 7 | ·/˘˘˘/˘ |
| The chiseled battle that grips | 8 | ·/˘˘/˘·· |
| This lean conductor’s face: | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| Motion without life, | 5 | /˘··· |
| And life that holds no motion! | 7 | ·····/˘ |
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.