To the Black Beloved
Ah,My black one,Thou art not beautifulYet thou hastA lovelinessSurpassing beauty.
Oh,My black one,Thou art not goodYet thou hastA puritySurpassing goodness.
Ah,My black one,Thou art not luminousYet an altar of jewels,An altar of shimmering jewels,Would pale in the lightOf thy darkness,Pale in the lightOf thy nightness.
Words in this poem
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- loveliness n.
- The state or quality of being lovely. [From Lovely.]
- shimmering n.
- A gleam or glimmering.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To the Black Beloved 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, To the Black Beloved, in The Weary Blues (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #74745, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hughes-weary-blues/to-the-black-beloved.html, id L01520.
Form and metre
To the Black Beloved is 21 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 4.0 syllables. 9 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 43% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic dimeter.
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 ---AABCBC ah · one · luminous · jewelsA · jewelsA · lightB · darknessC · lightB · nightnessC
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 dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Ah, | 1 | · |
| My black one, | 3 | ··· |
| Thou art not beautiful | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| Yet thou hast | 3 | ··· |
| A loveliness | 4 | ·/˘˘ |
| Surpassing beauty. | 5 | ˘/˘/˘ |
| Oh, | 1 | · |
| My black one, | 3 | ··· |
| Thou art not good | 4 | ···· |
| Yet thou hast | 3 | ··· |
| A purity | 4 | ·/˘˘ |
| Surpassing goodness. | 5 | ˘/˘/˘ |
| Ah, | 1 | · |
| My black one, | 3 | ··· |
| Thou art not luminous | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| Yet an altar of jewels, | 7 | ··/˘·/˘ |
| An altar of shimmering jewels, | 9 | ·/˘·/˘˘/˘ |
| Would pale in the light | 5 | ····· |
| Of thy darkness, | 4 | ··/˘ |
| Pale in the light | 4 | ···· |
| Of thy nightness. | 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.