A Wall Flower
I lounge in the doorway and languish in vainWhile Tom, Dick and Harry are dancing with Jane
My spirit rises to the music’s beat;There is a leaden fiend lurks in my feet!To move unto your motion, Love, were sweet.
Somewhere, I think, some other where, not here,In other ages, on another sphere,I danced with you, and you with me, my dear.
In perfect motion did our bodies sway,To perfect music that was heard alway;Woe’s me, that am so dull of foot to-day!
To move unto your motion, Love, were sweet;My spirit rises to the music’s beat--But, ah, the leaden demon in my feet!
Words in this poem
- doorway n.
- The passage of a door; entrance way into a house or a room.
- languish v. i.
- To cause to dr Shak.
- harry v. i.
- To make a predatory incursion; to plunder or lay waste.
- jane n.
- A coin of Genoa; any small coin. [LL. Janua Genoa; L. Genua, also OE. Jean.]
- somewhere adv.
- In some place unknown or not specified; in one place or another.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Wall Flower is in the public domain. This text is taken from A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #56974; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Amy Levy, A Wall Flower, in A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56974, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/levy-london-plane-tree/a-wall-flower.html, id L21564.
Form and metre
A Wall Flower is 14 lines in 5 verse paragraphs. It is in rhyming couplets, 57% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 AA vainA · janeA
- 2 AAA beatA · feetA · sweetA
- 3 AAA hereA · sphereA · dearA
- 4 A-A swayA · alway · dayA
- 5 AAA sweetA · beatA · feetA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I lounge in the doorway and languish in vain | 11 | ····/··/˘·· |
| While Tom, Dick and Harry are dancing with Jane | 11 | ····/˘·/˘·· |
| My spirit rises to the music’s beat; | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| There is a leaden fiend lurks in my feet! | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| To move unto your motion, Love, were sweet. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Somewhere, I think, some other where, not here, | 10 | /····/˘··· |
| In other ages, on another sphere, | 10 | ·/˘/˘·˘/˘· |
| I danced with you, and you with me, my dear. | 10 | ·········· |
| In perfect motion did our bodies sway, | 10 | ·/·/˘·//˘· |
| To perfect music that was heard alway; | 10 | ·˘//˘···/˘ |
| Woe’s me, that am so dull of foot to-day! | 10 | ·········· |
| To move unto your motion, Love, were sweet; | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| My spirit rises to the music’s beat-- | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| But, ah, the leaden demon in my feet! | 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.