The Crocuses
In the everlasting armsMid life's dangers and alarmsLet calm trust your spirit fill;Know He's God, and then be still."Trustingly I raised my headHearing what the atom said;Knowing man is greater farThan the brightest sun or star.
About this text
The Crocuses 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, The Crocuses, in Poems (1854–1871), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #679, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/harper-poems/the-crocuses.html, id L10529.
Form and metre
The Crocuses is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.1 syllables. 50% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in trochaic 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 AABBCCDD armsA · alarmsA · fillB · stillB · headC · saidC · farD · starD
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| In the everlasting arms | 7 | ···˘/˘· |
| Mid life's dangers and alarms | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| Let calm trust your spirit fill; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Know He's God, and then be still." | 7 | ······· |
| Trustingly I raised my head | 8 | ·····˘·· |
| Hearing what the atom said; | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Knowing man is greater far | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Than the brightest sun or star. | 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.