Young Singer
One who sings “chansons vulgaires”In a Harlem cellarWhere the jazz-band playsFrom dark to dawnWould not understandShould you tell herThat she is like a nymphFor some wild faun.
Words in this poem
- faun n.
- A god of fields and shipherds, diddering little from the satyr. [L. Faunus, fr. favere to be favorable. See Favor.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Young Singer 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, Young Singer, in The Weary Blues (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #74745, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hughes-weary-blues/young-singer.html, id L01492.
Form and metre
Young Singer is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.1 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 75% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 vulgaires · cellar · plays · dawnA · understand · her · nymph · faunA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| One who sings “chansons vulgaires” | 7 | ······· |
| In a Harlem cellar | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| Where the jazz-band plays | 5 | ····· |
| From dark to dawn | 4 | ···· |
| Would not understand | 5 | ···˘/ |
| Should you tell her | 4 | ···· |
| That she is like a nymph | 6 | ······ |
| For some wild faun. | 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.