When You Say
When you say, I still am young,You are young no more;When, I’m old, is on your tongue,Age is still in store.
Youth and age will never gropeTo say what they may be:One only knows it has a hope,And one a certainty.
About this text
When You Say 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, When You Say, in Sonnets and Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56244, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/farjeon-sonnets-poems/when-you-say.html, id L21988.
Form and metre
When You Say is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
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 ABAB youngA · moreB · tongueA · storeB
- 2 A-A- gropeA · be · hopeA · certainty
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When you say, I still am young, | 7 | ······· |
| You are young no more; | 5 | ····· |
| When, I’m old, is on your tongue, | 7 | ······· |
| Age is still in store. | 5 | ····· |
| Youth and age will never grope | 7 | ····/˘· |
| To say what they may be: | 6 | ······ |
| One only knows it has a hope, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| And one a certainty. | 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.