Life
Out of the infinite sea of eternityTo climb, and for an instant standUpon an island speck of time.
From the impassible peace of the darknessTo wake, and blink at the garish lightThrough one short hour of fretfulness.
Words in this poem
- impassible a.
- Incapable of suffering; inaccessible to harm or pain; not to be touched or moved to passion or sympathy; unfeeling, or not showing feeling; without sensation. [L. impassibilis; pref. im- not + passibilis passable: cf. F. impassible. See Passible.]
- blink v. i.
- To wink; to twinkle with, or as with, the eye. [OE. blenken; akin to dan. blinke, Sw. blinka, G. blinken to shine, glance, wink, twinkle, D. blinken to shine; and prob. to D. blikken to glance, twinkle, G. bl]
- garish a.
- Showy; dazzling; ostentatious; attracting or exciting attention. [Cf. OE. gauren to stare; of uncertain origin. Cf. gairish.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Life 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, Life, in Fifty Years and Other Poems (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #17884, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/johnson-fifty-years/life.html, id L08323.
Form and metre
Life is 6 lines in 2 stanzas of 3 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.0 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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.
- 2 A-A darknessA · light · fretfulnessA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Out of the infinite sea of eternity | 10 | ···/˘··˘/˘ |
| To climb, and for an instant stand | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Upon an island speck of time. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| From the impassible peace of the darkness | 11 | ··˘/˘˘···/˘ |
| To wake, and blink at the garish light | 9 | ······/˘· |
| Through one short hour of fretfulness. | 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.