Later
“You are cold, Father World, and harden’d forsooth,”Cried the man, “and exceeding wise,And for any offensive remarks of my youthI beg to apologize.”
Words in this poem
- forsooth v. t.
- To address respectfully with the term forsooth.
- apologize v. i.
- To make an apology or defense. Dr. H. More. [Cf. F. apologiser.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Later is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Bashful Earthquake, & Other Fables and Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #56765; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Oliver Herford, Later, in The Bashful Earthquake, and Other Fables and Verses (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56765, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herford-bashful-earthquake/later.html, id L22108.
Form and metre
Later is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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 ABAB forsoothA · wiseB · youthA · apologizeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| “You are cold, Father World, and harden’d forsooth,” | 11 | ···/˘··/˘˘/ |
| Cried the man, “and exceeding wise, | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
| And for any offensive remarks of my youth | 12 | ··/˘˘/˘˘/··· |
| I beg to apologize.” | 7 | ···˘/˘· |
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.