Renewal of Strength
The prison-house in which I liveIs falling to decay,But God renews my spirit's strength,Within these walls of clay.
About this text
Renewal of Strength 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, Renewal of Strength, in Poems (1854–1871), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #679, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/harper-poems/renewal-of-strength.html, id L10565.
Form and metre
Renewal of Strength is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 7.0 syllables.
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 live · decayA · strength · clayA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The prison-house in which I live | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Is falling to decay, | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| But God renews my spirit's strength, | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| Within these walls of clay. | 6 | ······ |
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.