Nancibel
The ghost of a wind came over the hill,While day for a moment forgot to die,And stirred the sheavesOf the millet leaves,As Nancibel went by.
Out of the lands of Long Ago,Into the land of By and By,Faded the gleamOf a journeying dream,As Nancibel went by.
Words in this poem
- ghost n.
- The spirit; the soul of man. [OE. gast, gost, soul, spirit, AS. gast breath, spirit, soul; akin to OS. g spirit, soul, D. geest, G. geist, and prob. to E. gaze, ghastly.]
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Nancibel 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, Nancibel, in More Songs from Vagabondia (1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18007, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/carman-vagabondia/nancibel.html, id L24713.
Form and metre
Nancibel is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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 -ABBA hill · dieA · sheavesB · leavesB · byA
- 2 -ABBA ago · byA · gleamB · dreamB · byA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The ghost of a wind came over the hill, | 9 | ········· |
| While day for a moment forgot to die, | 10 | ····/˘˘/·· |
| And stirred the sheaves | 4 | ···· |
| Of the millet leaves, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| As Nancibel went by. | 6 | ······ |
| Out of the lands of Long Ago, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Into the land of By and By, | 8 | ········ |
| Faded the gleam | 4 | /˘·· |
| Of a journeying dream, | 6 | ··/˘˘· |
| As Nancibel went by. | 6 | ······ |
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.