Song
All suddenly the wind comes soft,And Spring is here again;And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green,And my heart with buds of pain.
My heart all Winter lay so numb,The earth so dead and frore,That I never thought the Spring would come,Or my heart wake any more.
But Winter's broken and earth has woken,And the small birds cry again;And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds,And my heart puts forth its pain.
About this text
Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from 1914, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #33902; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Rupert Brooke, Song, in 1914 and Other Poems (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #33902, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/brooke-1914/song.html, id L04751.
Form and metre
Song is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in common measure.
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-A soft · againA · green · painA
- 2 ABAB numbA · froreB · comeA · moreB
- 3 AA-A wokenA · againA · buds · painA
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| All suddenly the wind comes soft, | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| And Spring is here again; | 6 | ····˘/ |
| And the hawthorn quickens with buds of green, | 10 | ··/·/˘···· |
| And my heart with buds of pain. | 7 | ······· |
| My heart all Winter lay so numb, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The earth so dead and frore, | 6 | ······ |
| That I never thought the Spring would come, | 8 | ··/····· |
| Or my heart wake any more. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| But Winter's broken and earth has woken, | 10 | ·/˘/˘···/˘ |
| And the small birds cry again; | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| And the hawthorn hedge puts forth its buds, | 9 | ··/······ |
| And my heart puts forth its pain. | 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.