All the Voices
Ye petrified on heavenly thrones,Was there not chaos once?Ye did not keep your ordered zonesWhen ye were raging suns!
Once flaming rivers were your breathAnd the wild hairs of your brow--Once ye were life, once ye were death!Ye are not either now.
Words in this poem
- chaos n.
- An empty, immeasurable space; a yawning chasm. [L. chaos chaos (in senses 1 & 2), Gr. Chasm.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
All the Voices is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sonnets and Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #56244; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Eleanor Farjeon, All the Voices, in Sonnets and Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56244, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/farjeon-sonnets-poems/all-the-voices.html, id L21991.
Form and metre
All the Voices is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in common measure.
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- thronesA · once · zonesA · suns
- 2 ABAB breathA · browB · deathA · nowB
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Ye petrified on heavenly thrones, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Was there not chaos once? | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Ye did not keep your ordered zones | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| When ye were raging suns! | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Once flaming rivers were your breath | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And the wild hairs of your brow-- | 7 | ······· |
| Once ye were life, once ye were death! | 8 | ········ |
| Ye are not either now. | 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.