The Informing Spirit I
There is no great and no smallTo the Soul that maketh all:And where it cometh, all things are;And it cometh everywhere.
About this text
The Informing Spirit I 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, The Informing Spirit I, in Poems (1847), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12843, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/emerson-poems/the-informing-spirit-i.html, id L07494.
Form and metre
The Informing Spirit I is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. 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 7.2 syllables.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AA-- smallA · allA · are · everywhere
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 |
|---|---|---|
| There is no great and no small | 7 | ······· |
| To the Soul that maketh all: | 7 | ······· |
| And where it cometh, all things are; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And it cometh everywhere. | 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.