Caritas
In the suburb, in the town,On the railway, in the square,Came a beam of goodness downDoubling daylight everywhere:Peace now each for malice takes,Beauty for his sinful weeds,For the angel Hope aye makesHim an angel whom she leads.
Words in this poem
- daylight n.
- The light of day as opposed to the darkness of night; the light of the sun, as opposed to that of the moon or to artificial light.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Caritas 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, Caritas, in Poems (1847), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12843, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/emerson-poems/caritas.html, id L07500.
Form and metre
Caritas is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCDCD. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.1 syllables. 25% 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 ABABCDCD townA · squareB · downA · everywhereB · takesC · weedsD · makesC · leadsD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| In the suburb, in the town, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| On the railway, in the square, | 7 | ··/···· |
| Came a beam of goodness down | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Doubling daylight everywhere: | 8 | /˘˘/·/˘· |
| Peace now each for malice takes, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Beauty for his sinful weeds, | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| For the angel Hope aye makes | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Him an angel whom she leads. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
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.