Deep in the Quiet Wood
Are you bowed down in heart?Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life?Then come away, come to the peaceful wood,Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now,From out the palpitating solitudeDo you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains?They are above, around, within you, everywhere.Silently listen! Clear, and still more clear, they come.They bubble up in rippling notes, and swell in singing tones.Now let your soul run the whole gamut of the wondrous scaleUntil, responsive to the tonic chord,It touches the diapason of God's grand cathedral organ,Filling earth for you with heavenly peaceAnd holy harmonies.
Words in this poem
- elusive a.
- Tending to elude; using arts or deception to escape; adroitly escaping or evading; eluding the grasp; fallacious.
- wondrous adv.
- In a wonderful or surprising manner or degree; wonderfully. [OE. wonders, adv. (later also adj.). See Wonder, n., and cf. -wards.]
- responsive a.
- That responds; ready or inclined to respond. [Cf. F. resposif.]
- diapason n.
- The octave, or interval which includes all the tones of the diatonic scale. [L., fr. Gr. i. e., diapason. Cf. Panacea.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Deep in the Quiet Wood is in the public domain. This text is taken from Fifty Years, & Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #17884; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: James Weldon Johnson, Deep in the Quiet Wood, in Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17884, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/johnson-fifty-years/deep-in-the-quiet-wood.html, id L08320.
Form and metre
Deep in the Quiet Wood is 14 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 99% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.7 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 21% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic pentameter, other poems in blank verse.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Are you bowed down in heart? | 7 | ···˘··· |
| Do you but hear the clashing discords and the din of life? | 14 | ·····/˘/˘····· |
| Then come away, come to the peaceful wood, | 10 | ··˘/···/˘· |
| Here bathe your soul in silence. Listen! Now, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| From out the palpitating solitude | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Do you not catch, yet faint, elusive strains? | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| They are above, around, within you, everywhere. | 12 | ·········/˘· |
| Silently listen! Clear, and still more clear, they come. | 11 | /˘/˘······· |
| They bubble up in rippling notes, and swell in singing tones. | 14 | ·/˘··/˘····/˘· |
| Now let your soul run the whole gamut of the wondrous scale | 14 | ·······/˘··/˘· |
| Until, responsive to the tonic chord, | 10 | ··˘/˘··/˘· |
| It touches the diapason of God's grand cathedral organ, | 15 | ·/˘·······˘/˘/˘ |
| Filling earth for you with heavenly peace | 9 | /˘····/˘· |
| And holy harmonies. | 6 | ·/˘/˘˘ |
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.