The City
A shining city, oneHappy in snow and sun,And singing in the rainA paradisal strain....Here is a dream to keep,O Builders, from your sleep.
O foolish Builders, wake,Take your trowels, takeThe poet’s dream, and buildThe city song has willed,That every stone may singAnd all your roads may ringWith happy wayfaring.
Words in this poem
- wayfaring a.
- Traveling; passing; being on a journey.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The City 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, The City, in Poems, 1908-1919 (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #51575, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/drinkwater-poems/the-city.html, id L23022.
Form and metre
The City is 13 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 AABBCC oneA · sunA · rainB · strainB · keepC · sleepC
- 2 AABBCCC wakeA · takeA · buildB · willedB · singC · ringC · wayfaringC
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A shining city, one | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Happy in snow and sun, | 6 | /˘···· |
| And singing in the rain | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| A paradisal strain.... | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| Here is a dream to keep, | 6 | ······ |
| O Builders, from your sleep. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| O foolish Builders, wake, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Take your trowels, take | 5 | ··/˘· |
| The poet’s dream, and build | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| The city song has willed, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| That every stone may sing | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| And all your roads may ring | 6 | ······ |
| With happy wayfaring. | 5 | ·/˘/˘ |
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.