Silence
'T is better to sit here beside the sea,Here on the spray-kissed beach,In silence, that between such friends as weIs full of deepest speech.
About this text
Silence 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, Silence, in The Complete Poems (1893–1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18338, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dunbar-poems/silence.html, id L00735.
Form and metre
Silence is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. The lines average 8.5 syllables.
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 ABAB seaA · beachB · weA · speechB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 'T is better to sit here beside the sea, | 11 | ··/˘···˘/·· |
| Here on the spray-kissed beach, | 7 | ·····˘· |
| In silence, that between such friends as we | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Is full of deepest speech. | 6 | ···/˘· |
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.