Topiary
Failing sometimes to understandWhy there are folk whose flesh should seemLike carrion puffed with noisome steam,Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it,Fly-blown to the touch of a hand;Why there are men without any legs,Whizzing along on little trolliesWith long long arms like apes':Failing to see why God the TopiaristShould train and carve and twistMen's bodies into such fantastic shapes:Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wishThat I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind,Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind,Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish.
Words in this poem
- folk n.
- In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]
- noisome a.
- Noxious to health; hurtful; mischievous; unwholesome; insalubrious; destructive; as, noisome effluvia. [For noysome, fr. noy for annoy. See Annoy.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Topiary is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Defeat of Youth, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #24364; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Aldous Huxley, Topiary, in The Defeat of Youth, and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #24364, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/huxley-defeat-of-youth/topiary.html, id L22032.
Form and metre
Topiary is 15 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ABB-A--CDDCEFFE understandA · seemB · steamB · it · handA · legs · trollies · apesC · topiaristD · twistD · shapesC · wishE · mindF · blindF · fishE
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Failing sometimes to understand | 8 | /˘˘/··˘/ |
| Why there are folk whose flesh should seem | 8 | ········ |
| Like carrion puffed with noisome steam, | 10 | ·/˘˘·˘·/˘· |
| Fly-blown to the eye that looks on it, | 9 | ········· |
| Fly-blown to the touch of a hand; | 8 | ········ |
| Why there are men without any legs, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| Whizzing along on little trollies | 8 | /˘˘/·/˘· |
| With long long arms like apes': | 6 | ······ |
| Failing to see why God the Topiarist | 10 | /˘········ |
| Should train and carve and twist | 6 | ······ |
| Men's bodies into such fantastic shapes: | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| Yes, failing to see the point of it all, I sometimes wish | 14 | ·/˘········/·· |
| That I were a fabulous thing in a fool's mind, | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| Or, at the ocean bottom, in a world that is deaf and blind, | 14 | ···//˘········ |
| Very remote and happy, a great goggling fish. | 12 | /˘˘/·/˘··/˘· |
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.