Instruction
I have a place in a little garden,That laurel-leaf and fernKeep a cool place though fires of summerAll the green grasses burn.Little cool winds creep there aboutWhen winds all else are dead,And tired limbs there find gentle keeping,And humours of sloth are shed.
So do your songs come always to me,Poets of age and age,Clear and cool as rivers of windThreading my hermitage,Stilling my mind from tribulationOf life half-seen, half-heard,With images made in the brain’s quietness,And the leaping of a word.
Words in this poem
- hermitage n.
- The habitation of a hermit; a secluded residence. [OE. hermitage, ermitage, F. hermitage, ermitage. See Hermit.]
- tribulation n.
- That which occasions distress, trouble, or vexation; severe affliction. [OE. tribulacium, F. tribulation, L. tribulatio, from tribulare to press, afflict, fr. tribulum a thrashing sledge, akin to terere, tritum, to rub. See Trite.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Instruction is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, 1908-1919, Project Gutenberg ebook #51575; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Drinkwater, Instruction, in Poems, 1908-1919 (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #51575, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/drinkwater-poems/instruction.html, id L23109.
Form and metre
Instruction is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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 AA-A-B-B gardenA · fernA · summer · burnA · about · deadB · keeping · shedB
- 2 -A-A-B-B me · ageA · wind · hermitageA · tribulation · heardB · quietness · wordB
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 have a place in a little garden, | 10 | ······/˘/˘ |
| That laurel-leaf and fern | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Keep a cool place though fires of summer | 9 | ·····/·/˘ |
| All the green grasses burn. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Little cool winds creep there about | 8 | /˘······ |
| When winds all else are dead, | 6 | ······ |
| And tired limbs there find gentle keeping, | 9 | ·/···/˘/˘ |
| And humours of sloth are shed. | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| So do your songs come always to me, | 9 | ·····/··· |
| Poets of age and age, | 6 | /˘···· |
| Clear and cool as rivers of wind | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| Threading my hermitage, | 6 | /˘·/˘˘ |
| Stilling my mind from tribulation | 9 | /˘····˘/˘ |
| Of life half-seen, half-heard, | 6 | ······ |
| With images made in the brain’s quietness, | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| And the leaping of a word. | 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.