Along With Youth
A porcupine skin,Stiff with bad tanning,It must have ended somewhere.Stuffed horned owlPompousYellow eyed;Chuck-wills-widow on a biassed twigSooted with dust.Piles of old magazines,Drawers of boy’s lettersAnd the line of loveThey must have ended somewhere.Yesterday’s Tribune is goneAlong with youthAnd the canoe that went to pieces on the beachThe year of the big stormWhen the hotel burned downAt Seney, Michigan.
Words in this poem
- somewhere adv.
- In some place unknown or not specified; in one place or another.
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Along With Youth is in the public domain. This text is taken from Three Stories & Ten Poems (poems only), Project Gutenberg ebook #59603; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ernest Hemingway, Along With Youth, in Ten Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59603, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemingway-ten-poems/along-with-youth.html, id L27125.
Form and metre
Along With Youth is 18 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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 --A--------A----BB skin · tanning · somewhereA · owl · pompous · eyed · twig · dust · magazines · letters · love · somewhereA · gone · youth · beach · storm · downB · michiganB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A porcupine skin, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| Stiff with bad tanning, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| It must have ended somewhere. | 7 | ···/˘/· |
| Stuffed horned owl | 3 | ··· |
| Pompous | 2 | /˘ |
| Yellow eyed; | 3 | /˘· |
| Chuck-wills-widow on a biassed twig | 9 | ··/˘··/˘· |
| Sooted with dust. | 4 | /˘·· |
| Piles of old magazines, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Drawers of boy’s letters | 5 | ···/˘ |
| And the line of love | 5 | ····· |
| They must have ended somewhere. | 7 | ···/˘/· |
| Yesterday’s Tribune is gone | 7 | /˘·/˘·· |
| Along with youth | 4 | ˘/·· |
| And the canoe that went to pieces on the beach | 12 | ··˘/···/˘··· |
| The year of the big storm | 6 | ······ |
| When the hotel burned down | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| At Seney, Michigan. | 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.