The Blind Ploughman
SET my hands upon the plough,My feet upon the sod;Turn my face towards the east,And praise be to God!
Every year the rains do fall,The seeds they stir and spring;Every year the spreading treesShelter birds that sing.
From the shelter of your heart,Brother—drive out sin,Let the little birds of faithCome and nest therein.
God has made His sun to shineOn both you and me;God, who took away my eyes,That my soul might see!
About this text
The Blind Ploughman 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, The Blind Ploughman, in Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #50591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hall-three-counties/the-blind-ploughman.html, id L22679.
Form and metre
The Blind Ploughman is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%).
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 plough · sodA · east · godA
- 2 -A-A fall · springA · trees · singA
- 3 -A-A heart · sinA · faith · thereinA
- 4 -A-A shine · meA · eyes · seeA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| SET my hands upon the plough, | 7 | ······· |
| My feet upon the sod; | 6 | ······ |
| Turn my face towards the east, | 7 | ······· |
| And praise be to God! | 5 | ····· |
| Every year the rains do fall, | 8 | /˘˘····· |
| The seeds they stir and spring; | 6 | ······ |
| Every year the spreading trees | 8 | /˘˘··/˘· |
| Shelter birds that sing. | 5 | /˘··· |
| From the shelter of your heart, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Brother—drive out sin, | 5 | /˘··· |
| Let the little birds of faith | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Come and nest therein. | 5 | ····· |
| God has made His sun to shine | 7 | ······· |
| On both you and me; | 5 | ····· |
| God, who took away my eyes, | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| That my soul might see! | 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.