Girl of Fifteen
Girl of fifteen,I see you each morning from my windowAs you pass on your way to school.I do more than see, I watch you.I furtively draw the curtain aside.And my heart leaps through my eyesAnd follows you down the street;Leaving me behind, half-hidAnd wholly ashamed.
What holds me back,Half-hid behind the curtains and wholly ashamed,But my forty years beyond your fifteen?
Girl of fifteen, as you passThere passes, too, a lightning flash of timeIn which you lift those forty summers off my head,And take those forty winters out of my heart.
Words in this poem
- furtively adv.
- Stealthily by theft. Lover.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Girl of Fifteen 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, Girl of Fifteen, in Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17884, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/johnson-fifty-years/girl-of-fifteen.html, id L08305.
Form and metre
Girl of Fifteen is 16 lines in 3 verse paragraphs. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 91% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 31% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Girl of fifteen, | 4 | ··˘/ |
| I see you each morning from my window | 10 | ····/˘··/˘ |
| As you pass on your way to school. | 8 | ········ |
| I do more than see, I watch you. | 8 | ········ |
| I furtively draw the curtain aside. | 9 | ·/˘··/˘˘/ |
| And my heart leaps through my eyes | 7 | ······· |
| And follows you down the street; | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Leaving me behind, half-hid | 7 | /˘····· |
| And wholly ashamed. | 5 | ·/˘˘/ |
| What holds me back, | 4 | ···· |
| Half-hid behind the curtains and wholly ashamed, | 12 | ·····/˘·/˘˘/ |
| But my forty years beyond your fifteen? | 10 | ··/˘····// |
| Girl of fifteen, as you pass | 7 | ··˘/··· |
| There passes, too, a lightning flash of time | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| In which you lift those forty summers off my head, | 12 | ·····/˘/˘··· |
| And take those forty winters out of my heart. | 11 | ···/˘/˘···· |
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.