In a Garden
Thought is a garden wide and oldFor airy creatures to explore,Where grow the great fantastic flowersWith truth for honey at the core.
There like a wild marauding beeMade desperate by hungry fears,From gorgeous If to dark PerhapsI blunder down the dusk of years.
Words in this poem
- explore v. t.
- To seek for or after; to strive to attain by search; to look wisely and carefully for. [L. explorare to explore; ex out+plorare to cry out aloud,prob. orig., to cause to flow; perh. akin to E. flow: cf. F. explorer.]
- desperate a.
- Without hope; given to despair; hopeless. [L. desperatus, p. p. of desperare. See Despair, and cf. Desperado.]
- gorgeous a.
- Imposing through splendid or various colors; showy; fine; magnificent. [OF. gorgias beautiful, glorious, vain, luxurious; cf. OF. gorgias ruff, neck handkerchief, and F. gorge throat, and se pengorger to assume airs. Cf. Gorge, n.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
In a Garden 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, In a Garden, in More Songs from Vagabondia (1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18007, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/carman-vagabondia/in-a-garden.html, id L24735.
Form and metre
In a Garden is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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-A old · exploreA · flowers · coreA
- 2 -A-A bee · fearsA · perhaps · yearsA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Thought is a garden wide and old | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| For airy creatures to explore, | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| Where grow the great fantastic flowers | 9 | ····˘/˘/˘ |
| With truth for honey at the core. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| There like a wild marauding bee | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
| Made desperate by hungry fears, | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| From gorgeous If to dark Perhaps | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| I blunder down the dusk of years. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
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.