Hush!
Every thought is public,Every nook is wide;Thy gossips spread each whisper,And the gods from side to side.
Words in this poem
- nook n.
- A narrow place formed by an angle in bodies or between bodies; a corner; a recess; a secluded retreat. [OE. nok; cf. Gael. & Ir. niuc.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Hush! 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, Hush!, in Poems (1847), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12843, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/emerson-poems/hush.html, id L07504.
Form and metre
Hush! is 4 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 82% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.8 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 -A-A public · wideA · whisper · sideA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Every thought is public, | 7 | /˘˘··/˘ |
| Every nook is wide; | 6 | /˘˘··· |
| Thy gossips spread each whisper, | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| And the gods from side to side. | 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.