Now Close the Windows
NOW close the windows and hush all the fields;If the trees must, let them silently toss;No bird is singing now, and if there is,Be it my loss.It will be long ere the marshes resume,It will be long ere the earliest bird:So close the windows and not hear the wind,But see all wind-stirred.
Words in this poem
- resume n.
- A summing up; a condensed statement; an abridgment or brief recapitulation. [F. See Resume.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Now Close the Windows is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Boy's Will, Project Gutenberg ebook #3021; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Frost, Now Close the Windows, in A Boy's Will (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3021, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/frost-boys-will/now-close-the-windows.html, id L04645.
Form and metre
Now Close the Windows is 8 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. 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.4 syllables.
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-B-B fields · tossA · is · lossA · resume · birdB · wind · stirredB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| NOW close the windows and hush all the fields; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| If the trees must, let them silently toss; | 10 | ······/˘˘· |
| No bird is singing now, and if there is, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Be it my loss. | 4 | ···· |
| It will be long ere the marshes resume, | 10 | ······/˘˘/ |
| It will be long ere the earliest bird: | 10 | ······/˘˘· |
| So close the windows and not hear the wind, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| But see all wind-stirred. | 5 | ····· |
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.