Commonplace
“A COMMONPLACE life,” we say, and we sigh;But why should we sigh as we say?The commonplace sun in the commonplace sky,Makes up the commonplace day;The moon and the stars are commonplace things,And the flower that blooms, and the bird that sings:But dark were the world and sad our lotIf the flowers failed and the sun shone not;And God, who studies each separate soul,Out of commonplace lives makes his beautiful whole.
About this text
Commonplace is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Few More Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #49518; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Susan Coolidge, Commonplace, in A Few More Verses (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #49518, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/coolidge-few-more-verses/commonplace.html, id L23489.
Form and metre
Commonplace is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 60% of the lines: heroic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ABABCCDDEE sighA · sayB · skyA · dayB · thingsC · singsC · lotD · notD · soulE · wholeE
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| “A COMMONPLACE life,” we say, and we sigh; | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| But why should we sigh as we say? | 8 | ········ |
| The commonplace sun in the commonplace sky, | 11 | ·/˘····/˘·· |
| Makes up the commonplace day; | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| The moon and the stars are commonplace things, | 10 | ······/˘·· |
| And the flower that blooms, and the bird that sings: | 10 | ··/······· |
| But dark were the world and sad our lot | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| If the flowers failed and the sun shone not; | 10 | ··/˘······ |
| And God, who studies each separate soul, | 10 | ···/˘·/˘˘· |
| Out of commonplace lives makes his beautiful whole. | 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.