Young Poet
The grinning clamour on your faceDies abruptly, for moments:Boldness and timidityAre swept, transfigured, against each other.But the glistening turmoilOnce more spurns itself with jestsThat light its troubled hands.
When too much pain has loweredThe eyelids of your mood,A peaceful humour wraps your face.You are like an old manWatching children fly from his fingertips.In your kirtle of borrowed skiesYou find a sorrow luring your horizonsInto hesitating brightness....When night remembers, you have straightenedInto stealthy, angry calmnessFingering it first, unsent arrow.
Words in this poem
- clamour n.
- A great outcry or vociferation; loud and continued shouting or exclamation. [OF. clamour, clamur, F. clameur, fr. L. clamor, fr. clamare to cry out. See Claim.]
- timidity n.
- The quality or state of being timid; timorousness; timidness. [L. timiditas: cf. F. timidité.]
- turmoil v. t.
- To harass with commotion; to disquiet; to worry.
- humour n.
- Moisture, especially, the moisture or fluid of animal bodies, as the chyle, lymph, etc.; as, the humors of the eye, etc. [OE. humour, OF. humor, umor, F. humeur, L. humor, umor, moisture, fluid, fr. humere, umere, to be moist. See Humid.]
- kirtle n.
- A garment varying in form and use at different times, and worn doth by men and women. [OE. kirtel, curtel, AS. cyrtel; skin to Icel. kyrtill, Sw. kjortel, Dan. kiortel, kiole.]
- angry a.
- Troublesome; vexatious; rigorous. [See Anger.]
- fingering n.
- The act or process of handling or touching with the fingers.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Young Poet 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, Young Poet, in Advice: A Book of Poems (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60252, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bodenheim-advice/young-poet.html, id L23402.
Form and metre
Young Poet is 18 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.
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.
- 2 AA--------- loweredA · moodA · face · man · fingertips · skies · horizons · brightness · straightened · calmness · arrow
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The grinning clamour on your face | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Dies abruptly, for moments: | 7 | ·˘/˘·/˘ |
| Boldness and timidity | 7 | /˘·˘/˘˘ |
| Are swept, transfigured, against each other. | 10 | ········/˘ |
| But the glistening turmoil | 7 | ··/˘˘/· |
| Once more spurns itself with jests | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| That light its troubled hands. | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| When too much pain has lowered | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| The eyelids of your mood, | 6 | ·/···· |
| A peaceful humour wraps your face. | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| You are like an old man | 6 | ······ |
| Watching children fly from his fingertips. | 10 | /˘/˘···/˘· |
| In your kirtle of borrowed skies | 8 | ··/˘·/·· |
| You find a sorrow luring your horizons | 11 | ···/˘/˘·˘/˘ |
| Into hesitating brightness.... | 8 | ··/˘·˘/˘ |
| When night remembers, you have straightened | 9 | ··˘/˘··/˘ |
| Into stealthy, angry calmness | 8 | ··/˘/˘/˘ |
| Fingering it first, unsent arrow. | 9 | /˘˘····/˘ |
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.