All the Dead
Priest and layman, virgin, strumpet,Good and ill commingled sleep,Waiting till the dreadful trumpetSeparates the wolves and sheep.
Words in this poem
- dreadful a.
- Full of dread or terror; fearful.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
All the 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, All the Dead, in Color (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70543, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/cullen-color/all-the-dead.html, id L01464.
Form and metre
All the Dead is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 strumpetA · sleepB · trumpetA · sheepB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Priest and layman, virgin, strumpet, | 8 | ··/˘/˘/˘ |
| Good and ill commingled sleep, | 8 | ···˘/˘˘· |
| Waiting till the dreadful trumpet | 8 | /˘··/˘/˘ |
| Separates the wolves and sheep. | 7 | /˘····· |
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.