I Be Thinkin’
THE hillside green with bracken,And the red plough land,The brownish hurrying rivers,Where the willows stand.The thickets and the meadows,And the strong oak trees;O, tell me traveller, have yerSeen the like o’ these?
The mists along the common,At the close of day,They’re lovely when the twilightMakes the vale look grey.The lanes be long and lonely,But they all lead home;I be thinkin’ lads are foolishWhen they wants to roam!
Words in this poem
- bracken n.
- A brake or fern. [OE. braken, AS. bracce. See 2d Brake, n.]
- vale n.
- A tract of low ground, or of land between hills; a valley. [OE. val, F. val, L. vallis; perhaps akin to Gr. Avalanche, Vail to lower, Valley.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
I Be Thinkin’ is in the public domain. This text is taken from Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #50591; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Radclyffe Hall, I Be Thinkin’, in Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #50591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hall-three-counties/i-be-thinkin.html, id L22668.
Form and metre
I Be Thinkin’ is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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 -ABABC-C bracken · landA · riversB · standA · meadowsB · treesC · yer · theseC
- 2 -A-A-B-B common · dayA · twilight · greyA · lonely · homeB · foolish · roamB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| THE hillside green with bracken, | 7 | ·/···/˘ |
| And the red plough land, | 5 | ····· |
| The brownish hurrying rivers, | 8 | ·/˘/˘˘/˘ |
| Where the willows stand. | 5 | ··/·· |
| The thickets and the meadows, | 7 | ·/˘··/· |
| And the strong oak trees; | 5 | ····· |
| O, tell me traveller, have yer | 8 | ···/˘˘·· |
| Seen the like o’ these? | 5 | ····· |
| The mists along the common, | 7 | ··˘/·/˘ |
| At the close of day, | 5 | ····· |
| They’re lovely when the twilight | 7 | ·/˘··/· |
| Makes the vale look grey. | 5 | ····· |
| The lanes be long and lonely, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| But they all lead home; | 5 | ····· |
| I be thinkin’ lads are foolish | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| When they wants to roam! | 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.