Her Eyes Twin Pools
Her eyes, twin pools of mystic light,The blend of star-sheen and black night;O'er which, to sound their glamouring haze,A man might bend, and vainly gaze.
Her eyes, twin pools so dark and deep,In which life's ancient mysteries sleep;Wherein, to seek the quested goal,A man might plunge, and lose his soul.
About this text
Her Eyes Twin Pools 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, Her Eyes Twin Pools, in Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17884, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/johnson-fifty-years/her-eyes-twin-pools.html, id L08328.
Form and metre
Her Eyes Twin Pools is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 AABB lightA · nightA · hazeB · gazeB
- 2 AABB deepA · sleepA · goalB · soulB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Her eyes, twin pools of mystic light, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The blend of star-sheen and black night; | 8 | ········ |
| O'er which, to sound their glamouring haze, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| A man might bend, and vainly gaze. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Her eyes, twin pools so dark and deep, | 8 | ········ |
| In which life's ancient mysteries sleep; | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Wherein, to seek the quested goal, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| A man might plunge, and lose his soul. | 8 | ········ |
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.