Advice to Youth
Since little time is granted hereFor pride in pain or play,Since blood soon cools before that FearThat makes our prowess clay,If lips to kiss are freely met,Lad, be not proud nor shy;There are no lips where men forget,And undesiring lie.
Words in this poem
- prowess n.
- Distinguished bravery; valor; especially, military bravery and skill; gallantry; intrepidity; fearlessness. Chaucer. Sir P. Sidney. [OF. proece, proesce, F. prouesse. See Prow, a.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Advice to Youth 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, Advice to Youth, in Color (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70543, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/cullen-color/advice-to-youth.html, id L01468.
Form and metre
Advice to Youth is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCDCD. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.1 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 ABABCDCD hereA · playB · fearA · clayB · metC · shyD · forgetC · lieD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Since little time is granted here | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| For pride in pain or play, | 6 | ······ |
| Since blood soon cools before that Fear | 8 | ········ |
| That makes our prowess clay, | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| If lips to kiss are freely met, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Lad, be not proud nor shy; | 6 | ······ |
| There are no lips where men forget, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| And undesiring lie. | 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.