Reality
It is strange how we travel the wide world over,And see great churches and foreign streets,And armies afoot and kings of wonder,And deeds a-doing to fill the sheetsThat grave historians will penTo ferment the brains of simple men.
And all the time the heart remembersThe quiet habit of one far place,The drawings and books, the turn of a passage,The glance of a dear familiar face,And there is the true cosmopolis,While the thronging world a phantom is.
About this text
Reality 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, Reality, in Poems, 1908-1919 (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #51575, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/drinkwater-poems/reality.html, id L23134.
Form and metre
Reality is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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-ABB over · streetsA · wonder · sheetsA · penB · menB
- 2 -A-A-- remembers · placeA · passage · faceA · cosmopolis · is
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| It is strange how we travel the wide world over, | 11 | ·····/˘···· |
| And see great churches and foreign streets, | 9 | ···/˘·/˘· |
| And armies afoot and kings of wonder, | 10 | ·/˘˘/···/˘ |
| And deeds a-doing to fill the sheets | 8 | ···/···· |
| That grave historians will pen | 8 | ··˘/˘˘·· |
| To ferment the brains of simple men. | 9 | ·˘/···/˘· |
| And all the time the heart remembers | 9 | ······˘/˘ |
| The quiet habit of one far place, | 8 | ·//˘···· |
| The drawings and books, the turn of a passage, | 11 | ·/˘······/˘ |
| The glance of a dear familiar face, | 9 | ·····˘/˘· |
| And there is the true cosmopolis, | 9 | ········· |
| While the thronging world a phantom is. | 9 | ··/˘··/˘· |
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.