The Carrier Pigeon
Who then--oh, who, is like our God so great,Who makes the seed expand beneath the mountain's weight;Who for a swallow's nest leaves one old castle wall,Who lets for famished beetles savory apples fall,Who bids a pigmy win where Titans fail, in yoke,And, in what we deem fruitless roar and smoke,Makes Etna, Chimborazo, still His praises sing,And saves a city by a word lapped 'neath a pigeon's wing!
Words in this poem
- deem v. t.
- To decide; to judge; to sentence; to condemn. [OE. demen to judge, condemn, AS. d, fr. d doom; akin to OFries. d, OS. ad, D. doemen, OHG. tuommen, Icel. dæma, Sw. dömma, Dan. dömme, Goth. d. See Doom, n., an]
- fruitless a.
- Lacking, or not bearing, fruit; barren; destitute of offspring; as, a fruitless tree or shrub; a fruitless marriage.
- etna n.
- A kind of small, portable, cooking apparatus for which heat is furnished by a spirit lamp.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Carrier Pigeon is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, the various hands translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Victor Hugo, The Carrier Pigeon, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hugo-poems/the-carrier-pigeon.html, id L26837.
Form and metre
The Carrier Pigeon is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is iambic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in iambic hexameter.
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 AABBCCDD greatA · weightA · wallB · fallB · yokeC · smokeC · singD · wingD
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Who then--oh, who, is like our God so great, | 11 | ······/˘··· |
| Who makes the seed expand beneath the mountain's weight; | 12 | ····˘/···/˘· |
| Who for a swallow's nest leaves one old castle wall, | 12 | ···/˘····/˘· |
| Who lets for famished beetles savory apples fall, | 12 | ·····/˘/˘/˘· |
| Who bids a pigmy win where Titans fail, in yoke, | 12 | ···/˘··/˘··· |
| And, in what we deem fruitless roar and smoke, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Makes Etna, Chimborazo, still His praises sing, | 12 | ·/˘······/˘· |
| And saves a city by a word lapped 'neath a pigeon's wing! | 14 | ···/˘······/˘· |
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.