A Baby Asleep After Pain
As a drenched, drowned beeHangs numb and heavy from a bending flower,So clings to meMy baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tearsAnd laid against her cheek;Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my armSwinging heavily to my movement as I walk.My sleeping baby hangs upon my life,Like a burden she hangs on me.She has always seemed so light,But now she is wet with tears and numb with painEven her floating hair sinks heavily,Reaching downwards;As the wings of a drenched, drowned beeAre a heaviness, and a weariness.
Words in this poem
- heaviness n.
- The state or quality of being heavy in its various senses; weight; sadness; sluggishness; oppression; thickness.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Baby Asleep After Pain is in the public domain. This text is taken from Amores: Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #22531; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: D. H. Lawrence, A Baby Asleep After Pain, in Amores (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22531, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lawrence-amores/a-baby-asleep-after-pain.html, id L13565.
Form and metre
A Baby Asleep After Pain is 15 lines in a single stanza. 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.5 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 40% 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.
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-----A----A- beeA · flower · meA · tears · cheek · arm · walk · life · meA · light · pain · heavily · downwards · beeA · weariness
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 |
|---|---|---|
| As a drenched, drowned bee | 5 | ····· |
| Hangs numb and heavy from a bending flower, | 11 | ···/˘··/˘/˘ |
| So clings to me | 4 | ···· |
| My baby, her brown hair brushed with wet tears | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And laid against her cheek; | 6 | ······ |
| Her soft white legs hanging heavily over my arm | 11 | ····/˘/˘··· |
| Swinging heavily to my movement as I walk. | 11 | /˘/˘··/˘··· |
| My sleeping baby hangs upon my life, | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| Like a burden she hangs on me. | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| She has always seemed so light, | 7 | ··/···· |
| But now she is wet with tears and numb with pain | 11 | ··········· |
| Even her floating hair sinks heavily, | 10 | /˘·/˘··/˘˘ |
| Reaching downwards; | 4 | /˘/˘ |
| As the wings of a drenched, drowned bee | 10 | ······˘·˘· |
| Are a heaviness, and a weariness. | 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.