Afraid
We cry among the skyscrapersAs our ancestorsCried among the palms in AfricaBecause we are alone,It is night,And we’re afraid.
About this text
Afraid is in the public domain. This text is taken from The weary blues, Project Gutenberg ebook #74745; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Langston Hughes, Afraid, in The Weary Blues (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #74745, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hughes-weary-blues/afraid.html, id L01546.
Form and metre
Afraid is 6 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in trochaic trimeter. 82% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.0 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| We cry among the skyscrapers | 8 | ·····/·˘ |
| As our ancestors | 6 | ·/˘/·˘ |
| Cried among the palms in Africa | 9 | ······/˘˘ |
| Because we are alone, | 6 | ····˘/ |
| It is night, | 3 | ··· |
| And we’re afraid. | 4 | ··˘/ |
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.