The sea is full of wandering foam
THE sea is full of wandering foam,The sky of driving cloud;My restless thoughts among them roam . . .The night is dark and loud.
Where are the hours that came to meSo beautiful and bright?A wild wind shakes the wilder sea . . .O, dark and loud’s the night!
About this text
The sea is full of wandering foam 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, The sea is full of wandering foam, in Poems (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1568, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/henley-poems/the-sea-is-full-of-wandering-foam.html, id L12393.
Form and metre
The sea is full of wandering foam is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
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 ABAB foamA · cloudB · roamA · loudB
- 2 ABAB meA · brightB · seaA · nightB
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| THE sea is full of wandering foam, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The sky of driving cloud; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| My restless thoughts among them roam . . . | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The night is dark and loud. | 6 | ······ |
| Where are the hours that came to me | 8 | ···/···· |
| So beautiful and bright? | 6 | ·/˘˘·· |
| A wild wind shakes the wilder sea . . . | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| O, dark and loud’s the night! | 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.