Circles
Nature centres into balls,And her proud ephemerals,Fast to surface and outside,Scan the profile of the sphere;Knew they what that signified,A new genesis were here.
Words in this poem
- scan v. t.
- To mount by steps; to go through with step by step. [L. scandere, scansum, to climb, to scan, akin to Skr. skand to spring, leap: cf. F. scander. Cf. Ascend, Descend, Scale a ladder.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Circles 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, Circles, in Poems (1847), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12843, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/emerson-poems/circles.html, id L07496.
Form and metre
Circles is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes AABCBC. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 AABCBC ballsA · ephemeralsA · outsideB · sphereC · signifiedB · hereC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Nature centres into balls, | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| And her proud ephemerals, | 7 | ···˘/˘˘ |
| Fast to surface and outside, | 7 | ··/˘·// |
| Scan the profile of the sphere; | 7 | ··/···· |
| Knew they what that signified, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| A new genesis were here. | 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.