Where?
Where is my love--In silence and shadow she lies,Under the April-grey, calm waste of the skies;And a bird above,In the darkness tender and clear,Keeps saying over and over, Love lies here!
Not that she's dead;Only her soul is flownOut of its last pure earthly mansion;And cries insteadIn the darkness, tender and clear,Like the voice of a bird in the leaves, Love--love lies here.
Words in this poem
- flown a.
- Flushed, inflated.
- mansion n.
- A dwelling place, -- whether a part or whole of a house or other shelter. [OF. mansion, F. maison, fr. L. mansio a staying, remaining, a dwelling, habitation, fr. manere, mansum, to stay, dwell; akin to Gr. Manse, Manor, Menagerie, Men]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Where? is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Listeners and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #22569; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Walter de la Mare, Where?, in The Listeners and Other Poems (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22569, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/de-la-mare-listeners/where.html, id L17088.
Form and metre
Where? is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBACC. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.4 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 17% 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 ABBACC loveA · liesB · skiesB · aboveA · clearC · hereC
- 2 ABBACC deadA · flownB · mansionB · insteadA · clearC · hereC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Where is my love-- | 4 | ···· |
| In silence and shadow she lies, | 8 | ·/˘·/··· |
| Under the April-grey, calm waste of the skies; | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| And a bird above, | 5 | ····· |
| In the darkness tender and clear, | 8 | ··/˘/˘·· |
| Keeps saying over and over, Love lies here! | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| Not that she's dead; | 4 | ···· |
| Only her soul is flown | 6 | /˘···· |
| Out of its last pure earthly mansion; | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| And cries instead | 4 | ··˘/ |
| In the darkness, tender and clear, | 8 | ··/˘/˘·· |
| Like the voice of a bird in the leaves, Love--love lies here. | 13 | ············· |
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.