Poem
I loved my friend.He went away from me.There’s nothing more to say.The poem ends,Soft as it began,—I loved my friend.
Words in this poem
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Poem 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, Poem, in The Weary Blues (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #74745, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hughes-weary-blues/poem-2.html, id L01543.
Form and metre
Poem is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 4.8 syllables.
See other poems in iambic 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 friendA · me · say · ends · began · friendA
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I loved my friend. | 4 | ···· |
| He went away from me. | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| There’s nothing more to say. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| The poem ends, | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Soft as it began,— | 5 | ···˘/ |
| I loved my friend. | 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.