Earth's Lyric
April. You hearken, my fellow,Old slumberer down in my heart?There's a whooping of ice in the rivers;The sap feels a start.
The snow-melted torrents are brawling;The hills, orange-misted and blue,Are touched with the voice of the rainbirdUnsullied and new.
The houses of frost are deserted,Their slumber is broken and done,And empty and pale are the portalsAwaiting the sun.
The bands of Arcturus are slackened;Orion goes forth from his placeOn the slopes of the night, leading homewardHis hound from the chase.
The Pleiades weary and followThe dance of the ghostly dawn;The revel of silence is over;Earth's lyric comes on.
A golden flute in the cedars,A silver pipe in the swales,And the slow large life of the forestWells bade and prevails.
A breath of the woodland spiritHas blown out the bubble of springTo this tenuous hyaline gloryOne touch sets a-wing.
Words in this poem
- slumberer n.
- One who slumbers; a sleeper.
- brawling a.
- Quarreling; quarrelsome; noisy.
- arcturus n.
- A fixed star of the first magnitude in the constellation Boötes. [L. Arcturus, Gr. Arctic.]
- orion n.
- A large and bright constellation on the equator, between the stars Aldebaran and Sirius. It contains a remarkable nebula visible to the naked eye.
- homeward a.
- Being in the direction of home; as, the homeward way.
- pleiades n.
- The seven daughters of Atlas and the nymph Pleione, fabled to have been made by Jupiter a constellation in the sky.
- ghostly a.
- Relating to the soul; not carnal or secular; spiritual; as, a ghostly confessor. [OE. gastlich, gostlich, AS. gastlic. See Ghost.]
- bade
- A form of the pat tense of Bid.
- tenuous a.
- Thin; slender; small; minute. [L. tenuis thin. See Thin, and cf. Tenuis.]
- hyaline a.
- Glassy; resembling glass; consisting of glass; transparent, like crystal. [L. hyalinus, Gr. hyalin.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Earth's Lyric is in the public domain. This text is taken from More Songs From Vagabondia, Project Gutenberg ebook #18007; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Bliss Carman, Earth's Lyric, in More Songs from Vagabondia (1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18007, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/carman-vagabondia/earth-s-lyric.html, id L24686.
Form and metre
Earth's Lyric is 28 lines in 7 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is anapaestic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in anapaestic trimeter.
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 fellow · heartA · rivers · startA
- 2 -A-A brawling · blueA · rainbird · newA
- 3 -A-A deserted · doneA · portals · sunA
- 4 -A-A slackened · placeA · homeward · chaseA
- 5 -A-A follow · dawnA · over · onA
- 6 -A-A cedars · swalesA · forest · prevailsA
- 7 -A-A spirit · springA · glory · wingA
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 anapaestic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| April. You hearken, my fellow, | 8 | /˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Old slumberer down in my heart? | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| There's a whooping of ice in the rivers; | 10 | ··/˘····/˘ |
| The sap feels a start. | 5 | ····· |
| The snow-melted torrents are brawling; | 9 | ··/˘/˘·/˘ |
| The hills, orange-misted and blue, | 8 | ··/˘/˘·· |
| Are touched with the voice of the rainbird | 9 | ········· |
| Unsullied and new. | 5 | ˘/˘·· |
| The houses of frost are deserted, | 9 | ·/˘···˘/˘ |
| Their slumber is broken and done, | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
| And empty and pale are the portals | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| Awaiting the sun. | 5 | ˘/˘·· |
| The bands of Arcturus are slackened; | 9 | ····/˘·/˘ |
| Orion goes forth from his place | 8 | ˘/˘····· |
| On the slopes of the night, leading homeward | 10 | ······/˘/˘ |
| His hound from the chase. | 5 | ····· |
| The Pleiades weary and follow | 9 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| The dance of the ghostly dawn; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| The revel of silence is over; | 8 | ·/˘·/˘·· |
| Earth's lyric comes on. | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| A golden flute in the cedars, | 8 | ·/˘···/˘ |
| A silver pipe in the swales, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| And the slow large life of the forest | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Wells bade and prevails. | 5 | ···˘/ |
| A breath of the woodland spirit | 8 | ····/·/˘ |
| Has blown out the bubble of spring | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| To this tenuous hyaline glory | 9 | ··/˘/˘˘/˘ |
| One touch sets a-wing. | 5 | ····· |
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.