Suicide
STARING corpselike at the ceiling,See his harsh, unrazored features,Ghastly brown against the pillow,And his throat—so strangely bandaged!
Lack of work and lack of victuals,A debauch of smuggled whisky,And his children in the workhouseMade the world so black a riddle
That he plunged for a solution;And, although his knife was edgeless,He was sinking fast towards one,When they came, and found, and saved him.
Stupid now with shame and sorrow,In the night I hear him sobbing.But sometimes he talks a little.He has told me all his troubles.
In his broad face, tanned and bloodless,White and wild his eyeballs glisten;And his smile, occult and tragic,Yet so slavish, makes you shudder!
Words in this poem
- strangely adv.
- As something foreign, or not one's own; in a manner adapted to something foreign and strange.
- workhouse n.
- A house where any manufacture is carried on; a workshop. [AS. weorch.]
- edgeless a.
- Without an edge; not sharp; blunt; obtuse; as, an edgeless sword or weapon.
- sobbing n.
- A series of short, convulsive inspirations, the glottis being suddenly closed so that little or no air enters into the lungs.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Suicide is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #1568; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: W. E. Henley, Suicide, in Poems (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1568, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/henley-poems/suicide.html, id L12345.
Form and metre
Suicide is 20 lines in 5 verse paragraphs. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 18 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 10% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See 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.
- 3 A-A- solutionA · edgeless · oneA · him
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 |
|---|---|---|
| STARING corpselike at the ceiling, | 9 | /˘·····/˘ |
| See his harsh, unrazored features, | 8 | ···˘/˘/˘ |
| Ghastly brown against the pillow, | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| And his throat—so strangely bandaged! | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Lack of work and lack of victuals, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| A debauch of smuggled whisky, | 8 | ·˘/·/˘/˘ |
| And his children in the workhouse | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| Made the world so black a riddle | 8 | ······/˘ |
| That he plunged for a solution; | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| And, although his knife was edgeless, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| He was sinking fast towards one, | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| When they came, and found, and saved him. | 8 | ········ |
| Stupid now with shame and sorrow, | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| In the night I hear him sobbing. | 8 | ······/˘ |
| But sometimes he talks a little. | 8 | ·˘/···/˘ |
| He has told me all his troubles. | 8 | ······/˘ |
| In his broad face, tanned and bloodless, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| White and wild his eyeballs glisten; | 8 | ····/·/˘ |
| And his smile, occult and tragic, | 8 | ···˘/·/˘ |
| Yet so slavish, makes you shudder! | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
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.