Forbearance
Hast thou named all the birds without a gun?Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk?At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse?Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust?And loved so well a high behavior,In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained,Nobility more nobly to repay?O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine!
Words in this poem
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- unarmed a.
- Not armed or armored; having no arms or weapons. [Pref. un- not + armed.]
- nobly adv.
- Of noble extraction; as, nobly born or descended.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Forbearance 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, Forbearance, in Poems (1847), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12843, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/emerson-poems/forbearance.html, id L07406.
Form and metre
Forbearance is 8 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic pentameter, other poems in blank verse.
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.
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Hast thou named all the birds without a gun? | 10 | ·········· |
| Loved the wood-rose, and left it on its stalk? | 10 | ·········· |
| At rich men's tables eaten bread and pulse? | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Unarmed, faced danger with a heart of trust? | 10 | ˘/·/˘····· |
| And loved so well a high behavior, | 9 | ······˘/˘ |
| In man or maid, that thou from speech refrained, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Nobility more nobly to repay? | 9 | ˘/˘·/˘·˘/ |
| O, be my friend, and teach me to be thine! | 10 | ·········· |
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.