Berrying
'May be true what I had heard,--Earth's a howling wilderness,Truculent with fraud and force,'Said I, strolling through the pastures,And along the river-side.Caught among the blackberry vines,Feeding on the Ethiops sweet,Pleasant fancies overtook me.I said, 'What influence me preferred,Elect, to dreams thus beautiful?'The vines replied, 'And didst thou deemNo wisdom from our berries went?'
Words in this poem
- truculent a.
- Fierce; savage; ferocious; barbarous; as, the truculent inhabitants of Scythia. Ray. [L.truculentus, fr. trux, gen. trucis, wild, fierce: cf. F. truculent.]
- ethiops n.
- A black substance; -- formerly applied to various preparations of a black or very dark color. [Written also Æthiops.] Ethiops martial (Old Chem.), black oxide of iron. [NL. See Ethiop.]
- didst
- , the 2d pers. sing. imp. of Do.
- deem v. t.
- To decide; to judge; to sentence; to condemn. [OE. demen to judge, condemn, AS. d, fr. d doom; akin to OFries. d, OS. ad, D. doemen, OHG. tuommen, Icel. dæma, Sw. dömma, Dan. dömme, Goth. d. See Doom, n., an]
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Berrying is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems Household Edition, Project Gutenberg ebook #12843; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Berrying, in Poems (1847), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12843, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/emerson-poems/berrying.html, id L07396.
Form and metre
Berrying is 12 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%). 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.7 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 8% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic 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 A-------A--- heardA · wilderness · force · pastures · side · vines · sweet · me · preferredA · beautiful · deem · went
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| 'May be true what I had heard,-- | 7 | ······· |
| Earth's a howling wilderness, | 7 | ··/˘/˘˘ |
| Truculent with fraud and force,' | 7 | /˘˘···· |
| Said I, strolling through the pastures, | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| And along the river-side. | 7 | ·˘/·/˘· |
| Caught among the blackberry vines, | 8 | ····/·˘· |
| Feeding on the Ethiops sweet, | 8 | /˘··/˘˘· |
| Pleasant fancies overtook me. | 8 | /˘/˘·˘/· |
| I said, 'What influence me preferred, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| Elect, to dreams thus beautiful?' | 8 | ˘/···/˘˘ |
| The vines replied, 'And didst thou deem | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| No wisdom from our berries went?' | 8 | ·/˘·//˘· |
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.