Struggle
My soul is like the oar that momentlyDies in a desperate stress beneath the wave,Then glitters out again and sweeps the sea:Each second I'm new-born from some new grave.
Words in this poem
- desperate a.
- Without hope; given to despair; hopeless. [L. desperatus, p. p. of desperare. See Despair, and cf. Desperado.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Struggle 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, Struggle, in Poems (1884), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #579, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lanier-poems/struggle.html, id L07659.
Form and metre
Struggle 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. 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 1 line ends 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.
- 1 -A-A momently · waveA · sea · graveA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My soul is like the oar that momently | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Dies in a desperate stress beneath the wave, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Then glitters out again and sweeps the sea: | 10 | ·/˘·˘/···· |
| Each second I'm new-born from some new grave. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
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.