Chapter Heading
For we have thought the longer thoughtsAnd gone the shorter way.And we have danced to devils’ tunes,Shivering home to pray;To serve one master in the night,Another in the day.
About this text
Chapter Heading 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, Chapter Heading, in Ten Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59603, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemingway-ten-poems/chapter-heading.html, id L27126.
Form and metre
Chapter Heading is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%).
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-A thoughts · wayA · tunes · prayA · night · dayA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| For we have thought the longer thoughts | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And gone the shorter way. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| And we have danced to devils’ tunes, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Shivering home to pray; | 6 | /˘˘··· |
| To serve one master in the night, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Another in the day. | 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.