The Wound
I CLIMBED to the crest,And, fog-festooned,The sun lay westLike a crimson wound:
Like that wound of mineOf which none knew,For I’d given no signThat it pierced me through.
About this text
The Wound is in the public domain. This text is taken from Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #3255; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Thomas Hardy, The Wound, in Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3255, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hardy-moments-of-vision/the-wound.html, id L24141.
Form and metre
The Wound is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 crestA · festoonedB · westA · woundB
- 2 ABAB mineA · knewB · signA · throughB
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I CLIMBED to the crest, | 5 | ····· |
| And, fog-festooned, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| The sun lay west | 4 | ···· |
| Like a crimson wound: | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Like that wound of mine | 5 | ····· |
| Of which none knew, | 4 | ···· |
| For I’d given no sign | 5 | ··/·· |
| That it pierced me through. | 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.