Oily Weather
The sea desires deep hulls—It swells and rolls.The screw churns a throb—Driving, throbbing, progressing.The sea rolls with loveSurging, caressing,Undulating its great loving belly.The sea is big and old—Throbbing ships scorn it.
Words in this poem
- throb v. i.
- To beat, or pulsate, with more than usual force or rapidity; to beat in consequence of agitation; to palpitate; -- said of the heart, pulse, etc. [OE. ; of uncertain origin; cf. Russ. trepete a trembling, and E. trepidation.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Oily Weather 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, Oily Weather, in Ten Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59603, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hemingway-ten-poems/oily-weather.html, id L27119.
Form and metre
Oily Weather is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%).
See other poems in trochaic 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--- hulls · rolls · throb · progressingA · love · caressingA · belly · old · it
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The sea desires deep hulls— | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| It swells and rolls. | 4 | ···· |
| The screw churns a throb— | 5 | ····· |
| Driving, throbbing, progressing. | 7 | /˘/˘˘/˘ |
| The sea rolls with love | 5 | ····· |
| Surging, caressing, | 5 | /˘˘/˘ |
| Undulating its great loving belly. | 10 | /˘·˘··/˘/˘ |
| The sea is big and old— | 6 | ······ |
| Throbbing ships scorn it. | 5 | /˘··· |
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.