An Appeal to My Countrywomen
Gracious Saviour, when life's day-dreamsMelt and vanish from the sight,May our dim and longing visionThen be blessed with light, more light.
Words in this poem
- saviour n.
- One who saves, preserves, or delivers from destruction or danger. [OE. saveour, OF. salveor, F. sauveur, fr. L. salvator to save. See Save, v.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
An Appeal to My Countrywomen is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #679; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, An Appeal to My Countrywomen, in Poems (1854–1871), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #679, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/harper-poems/an-appeal-to-my-countrywomen.html, id L10615.
Form and metre
An Appeal to My Countrywomen is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 dreams · sightA · vision · lightA
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Gracious Saviour, when life's day-dreams | 8 | /˘/˘···· |
| Melt and vanish from the sight, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| May our dim and longing vision | 9 | ·/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Then be blessed with light, more light. | 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.