Death of the Old Sea King
'Twas a fearful night--the tempest ravedWith loud and wrathful pride,The storm-king harnessed his lightning steeds,And rode on the raging tide.
The sea-king lay on his bed of death,Pale mourners around him bent;They knew the wild and fitful lifeOf their chief was almost spent.
His ear was growing dull in deathWhen the angry storm he heard,
Words in this poem
- wrathful a.
- Full of wrath; very angry; greatly incensed; ireful; passionate; as, a wrathful man.
- rode n.
- Redness; complexion. [See Rud.]
- fitful a.
- Full of fits; irregularly variable; impulsive and unstable. [From 7th Fit.]
- angry a.
- Troublesome; vexatious; rigorous. [See Anger.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Death of the Old Sea King 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, Death of the Old Sea King, in Poems (1854–1871), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #679, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/harper-poems/death-of-the-old-sea-king-2.html, id L10573.
Form and metre
Death of the Old Sea King is 10 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.7 syllables. 30% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 -A-A raved · prideA · steeds · tideA
- 2 -A-A death · bentA · life · spentA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 'Twas a fearful night--the tempest raved | 9 | ··/˘··/˘· |
| With loud and wrathful pride, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The storm-king harnessed his lightning steeds, | 9 | ···/˘·/˘· |
| And rode on the raging tide. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| The sea-king lay on his bed of death, | 9 | ········· |
| Pale mourners around him bent; | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| They knew the wild and fitful life | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Of their chief was almost spent. | 7 | ····/·· |
| His ear was growing dull in death | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| When the angry storm he heard, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
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.