The Mother of Poets. To H. F. H
The typewriter ticketh no more in the twilight;The mother of poets is sitting alone;Only the katydid teases the noonday;Where are the good-for-naught wanderbirds flown?
Tom's in the North with his purple impressions;Dickon's in London a-building his fame;Fred's in the mountains a-minding his cattle;Kavanagh's teaching and preaching and game.
Over in Kingscroft a toiler is writing,The boyish Old Man whom no fate ever floored;Karl's in New York with his briefs and his logic,That subtile mind like a velvet-sheathed sword.
Blomidon welcomes his brother in silence;Grand Pre is luring him back to her breast;Faint and far off are the cries of the city,There in the country of infinite rest.
All of them turn in their wide vagabondage,Halt and remember a place they have known,Where the typewriter ticketh no more in the twilight,And the mother of poets is sitting alone.
There they will surely some April forgather,Drink once together before they depart,One by one over the threshold of silence,On the long trail of the wandering heart.
Fear not, little mother, there may be a regionWhere poets have only to smile and keep still.The tick of the typewriter there will be useless,But there will be need of a motherkin still.
Words in this poem
- katydid n.
- A large, green, arboreal, orthopterous insect (Cyrtophyllus concavus) of the family Locustidæ, common in the United States. The males have stridulating organs at the bases of the front wings.
- noonday n.
- Midday; twelve o'clock in the day; noon.
- flown a.
- Flushed, inflated.
- toiler n.
- One who toils, or labors painfully.
- boyish a.
- Resembling a boy in a manners or opinions; belonging to a boy; childish; trifling; puerile.
- vagabondage n.
- The condition of a vagabond; a state or habit of wandering about in idleness; vagrancy. [Cf. F. vagabondage.]
- forgather v. i.
- To convene; to gossip; to meet accidentally. Jamieson.
- depart v. i.
- To part; to divide; to separate. [OE. departen to divide, part, depart, F. départir to divide, distribute, se départir to separate one's self, depart; pref. dé- (L. de) + partir to part, depart,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Mother of Poets. To H. F. H 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, The Mother of Poets. To H. F. H, in More Songs from Vagabondia (1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18007, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/carman-vagabondia/the-mother-of-poets-to-h-f-h.html, id L24718.
Form and metre
The Mother of Poets. To H. F. H is 28 lines in 7 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is dactylic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%).
See other poems in dactylic 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 twilight · aloneA · noonday · flownA
- 2 -A-A impressions · fameA · cattle · gameA
- 3 -A-A writing · flooredA · logic · swordA
- 4 -A-A silence · breastA · city · restA
- 5 -A-A vagabondage · knownA · twilight · aloneA
- 6 -A-A forgather · departA · silence · heartA
- 7 -A-A region · stillA · useless · stillA
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 dactylic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The typewriter ticketh no more in the twilight; | 11 | ·/˘/˘····/· |
| The mother of poets is sitting alone; | 11 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘˘/ |
| Only the katydid teases the noonday; | 11 | /˘·/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Where are the good-for-naught wanderbirds flown? | 10 | ·········· |
| Tom's in the North with his purple impressions; | 11 | ······/˘˘/˘ |
| Dickon's in London a-building his fame; | 10 | ···/˘·/˘·· |
| Fred's in the mountains a-minding his cattle; | 11 | ···/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Kavanagh's teaching and preaching and game. | 10 | /˘·/˘·/˘·· |
| Over in Kingscroft a toiler is writing, | 11 | ······/˘·/˘ |
| The boyish Old Man whom no fate ever floored; | 11 | ·/˘·····/˘· |
| Karl's in New York with his briefs and his logic, | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| That subtile mind like a velvet-sheathed sword. | 11 | ·/˘···/˘·˘· |
| Blomidon welcomes his brother in silence; | 11 | ···/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Grand Pre is luring him back to her breast; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Faint and far off are the cries of the city, | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| There in the country of infinite rest. | 10 | ···/˘·/˘˘· |
| All of them turn in their wide vagabondage, | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Halt and remember a place they have known, | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| Where the typewriter ticketh no more in the twilight, | 12 | ··/˘/˘····/· |
| And the mother of poets is sitting alone. | 12 | ··/˘·/˘·/˘˘/ |
| There they will surely some April forgather, | 11 | ···/˘·/˘˘/˘ |
| Drink once together before they depart, | 10 | ··˘/˘···˘/ |
| One by one over the threshold of silence, | 11 | ······/··/˘ |
| On the long trail of the wandering heart. | 10 | ······/˘˘· |
| Fear not, little mother, there may be a region | 12 | ··/˘/˘····/˘ |
| Where poets have only to smile and keep still. | 11 | ·/˘·/˘····· |
| The tick of the typewriter there will be useless, | 12 | ····/·˘···/˘ |
| But there will be need of a motherkin still. | 11 | ··········· |
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.