Caprice
“I’ll tell him, when he comes,” she said,“Body and baggage, to go,Though the night be darker than my hair,And the ground be hard with snow.”
But when he came with his gay black headThrown back, and his lips apart,She flipped a light hair from his coat,And sobbed against his heart.
About this text
Caprice 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, Caprice, in Color (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70543, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/cullen-color/caprice.html, id L01469.
Form and metre
Caprice is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 12% 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 -A-A said · goA · hair · snowA
- 2 -A-A head · apartA · coat · heartA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| “I’ll tell him, when he comes,” she said, | 8 | ········ |
| “Body and baggage, to go, | 7 | /˘·/˘·· |
| Though the night be darker than my hair, | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| And the ground be hard with snow.” | 7 | ······· |
| But when he came with his gay black head | 9 | ········· |
| Thrown back, and his lips apart, | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| She flipped a light hair from his coat, | 8 | ········ |
| And sobbed against his heart. | 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.