The Wise
Dead men are wisest, for they knowHow far the roots of flowers go,How long a seed must rot to grow.
Dead men alone bear frost and rainOn throbless heart and heatless brain,And feel no stir of joy or pain.
Dead men alone are satiate;They sleep and dream and have no weight,To curb their rest, of love or hate.
Strange, men should flee their company,Or think me strange who long to beWrapped in their cool immunity.
Words in this poem
- heatless a.
- Destitute of heat; cold. Beau. & Fl.
- satiate a.
- Filled to satiety; glutted; sated; -- followed by with or of. [L. satiatus, p. p. of satiare to satisfy, from sat, satis, enough. See Sad, a., and cf. Sate.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Wise 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, The Wise, in Color (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70543, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/cullen-color/the-wise.html, id L01476.
Form and metre
The Wise is 12 lines in 4 stanzas of 3 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AAA knowA · goA · growA
- 2 AAA rainA · brainA · painA
- 3 AAA satiateA · weightA · hateA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Dead men are wisest, for they know | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| How far the roots of flowers go, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| How long a seed must rot to grow. | 8 | ········ |
| Dead men alone bear frost and rain | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| On throbless heart and heatless brain, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And feel no stir of joy or pain. | 8 | ········ |
| Dead men alone are satiate; | 8 | ··˘/·/˘˘ |
| They sleep and dream and have no weight, | 8 | ········ |
| To curb their rest, of love or hate. | 8 | ········ |
| Strange, men should flee their company, | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| Or think me strange who long to be | 8 | ········ |
| Wrapped in their cool immunity. | 8 | ····˘/˘˘ |
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.