Control
O Hunger, Hunger, I will harness theeAnd make thee harrow all my spirit's glebe.Of old the blind bard Herve sang so sweetHe made a wolf to plow his land.
About this text
Control is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Sidney Lanier, Project Gutenberg ebook #579; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sidney Lanier, Control, in Poems (1884), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #579, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lanier-poems/control.html, id L07660.
Form and metre
Control is 4 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. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.2 syllables.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O Hunger, Hunger, I will harness thee | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| And make thee harrow all my spirit's glebe. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Of old the blind bard Herve sang so sweet | 9 | ········· |
| He made a wolf to plow his land. | 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.