Phantom
All look and likeness caught from earth,All accident of kin and birth,Had pass'd away. There was no traceOf aught on that illumined face,Upraised beneath the rifted stone,But of one spirit all her own;--She, she herself, and only she,Shone through her body visibly.
Words in this poem
- aught n.
- Property; possession. [AS. , fr. agan to own, p. p. ahte.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Phantom is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of Coleridge, Project Gutenberg ebook #8208; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Phantom, in Poems of Coleridge (1796–1817), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8208, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/coleridge-poems/phantom.html, id L00340.
Form and metre
Phantom is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 75% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AABBCC-- earthA · birthA · traceB · faceB · stoneC · ownC · she · visibly
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 |
|---|---|---|
| All look and likeness caught from earth, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| All accident of kin and birth, | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| Had pass'd away. There was no trace | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| Of aught on that illumined face, | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
| Upraised beneath the rifted stone, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| But of one spirit all her own;-- | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| She, she herself, and only she, | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| Shone through her body visibly. | 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.