Dead Cow Farm
An ancient saga tells us howIn the beginning the First Cow(For nothing living yet had birthBut Elemental Cow on earth)Began to lick cold stones and mud:Under her warm tongue flesh and bloodBlossomed, a miracle to believe:And so was Adam born, and Eve.Here now is chaos once again,Primeval mud, cold stones and rain.Here flesh decays and blood drips red,And the Cow's dead, the old Cow's dead.
Words in this poem
- saga n.
- A Scandinavian legend, or heroic or mythic tradition, among the Norsemen and kindred people; a northern European popular historical or religious tale of olden time. [Icel., akin to E. saw a saying. See Say, and cf. Saw.]
- 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
Dead Cow Farm is in the public domain. This text is taken from Fairies and Fusiliers, Project Gutenberg ebook #10122; 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 Graves, Dead Cow Farm, in Fairies and Fusiliers (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10122, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/graves-fairies/dead-cow-farm.html, id L02415.
Form and metre
Dead Cow Farm is 12 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 33% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 AABBCCDDEEFF howA · cowA · birthB · earthB · mudC · bloodC · believeD · eveD · againE · rainE · redF · deadF
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 |
|---|---|---|
| An ancient saga tells us how | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| In the beginning the First Cow | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| (For nothing living yet had birth | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| But Elemental Cow on earth) | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| Began to lick cold stones and mud: | 8 | ˘/······ |
| Under her warm tongue flesh and blood | 8 | ········ |
| Blossomed, a miracle to believe: | 8 | /˘·/˘·˘/ |
| And so was Adam born, and Eve. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Here now is chaos once again, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| Primeval mud, cold stones and rain. | 8 | ˘/˘····· |
| Here flesh decays and blood drips red, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| And the Cow's dead, the old Cow's dead. | 8 | ········ |
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.