Rain-Songs
The rain streams down like harp-strings from the sky;The wind, that world-old harpist sitteth by;And ever as he sings his low refrain,He plays upon the harp-strings of the rain.
Words in this poem
- harpist n.
- A player on the harp; a harper. W. Browne. [Gf. F. harpiste.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Rain-Songs is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Project Gutenberg ebook #18338; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Paul Laurence Dunbar, Rain-Songs, in The Complete Poems (1893–1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18338, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dunbar-poems/rain-songs.html, id L00875.
Form and metre
Rain-Songs is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 9.8 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 AABB skyA · byA · refrainB · rainB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The rain streams down like harp-strings from the sky; | 10 | ·········· |
| The wind, that world-old harpist sitteth by; | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| And ever as he sings his low refrain, | 9 | ·/·····˘/ |
| He plays upon the harp-strings of the rain. | 10 | ·········· |
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.