A Brown Girl Dead
With two white roses on her breasts,White candles at head and feet,Dark Madonna of the grave she rests;Lord Death has found her sweet.
Her mother pawned her wedding ringTo lay her out in white;She’d be so proud she’d dance and singTo see herself tonight.
Words in this poem
- madonna n.
- My lady; -- a term of address in Italian formerly used as the equivalent of Madame, but for which Signora is now substituted. [It. madonna my lady. See Dame, Donna, and cf. Madame, Monkey.]
- tonight adv.
- On this present or coming night. [Prep. to+night]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Brown Girl Dead is in the public domain. This text is taken from Color, Project Gutenberg ebook #70543; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Countee Cullen, A Brown Girl Dead, in Color (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70543, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/cullen-color/a-brown-girl-dead.html, id L01417.
Form and metre
A Brown Girl Dead is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.2 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
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 ABAB breastsA · feetB · restsA · sweetB
- 2 ABAB ringA · whiteB · singA · tonightB
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| With two white roses on her breasts, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| White candles at head and feet, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Dark Madonna of the grave she rests; | 9 | ·˘/˘····· |
| Lord Death has found her sweet. | 6 | ······ |
| Her mother pawned her wedding ring | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| To lay her out in white; | 6 | ······ |
| She’d be so proud she’d dance and sing | 8 | ········ |
| To see herself tonight. | 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.