Fate
Her planted eye to-day controls,Is in the morrow most at home,And sternly calls to being soulsThat curse her when they come.
Words in this poem
- sternly adv.
- In a stern manner.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Fate 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, Fate, in Poems (1847), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12843, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/emerson-poems/fate-2.html, id L07516.
Form and metre
Fate is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.5 syllables.
See other poems in iambic 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 ABAB controlsA · homeB · soulsA · comeB
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 iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Her planted eye to-day controls, | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Is in the morrow most at home, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And sternly calls to being souls | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| That curse her when they come. | 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.