In the Mile End Road

Amy Levy (1861–1889) · 1889

common measure · 8 lines · from A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse

How like her! But ’tis she herself,Comes up the crowded street,How little did I think, the morn,My only love to meet!

Whose else that motion and that mien?Whose else that airy tread?For one strange moment I forgotMy only love was dead.

Words in this poem

morn n.
The first part of the day; the morning; -- used chiefly in poetry. [OE. morwen, morgen, AS. morgen; akin to D. morgen, OS. morgan, G. morgen, Icel. morginn, morgunn, Sw. morgon, Dan. morgen, Goth. maúrgins. Cf. Morrow, Morning.]

Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.

About this text

In the Mile End Road 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, In the Mile End Road, in A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56974, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/levy-london-plane-tree/in-the-mile-end-road.html, id L21545.

Form and metre

In the Mile End Road is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).

See other poems in common measure.

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. 1 -A-A herself · streetA · morn · meetA
  2. 2 -A-A mien · treadA · forgot · deadA
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 common measure. How this is done.

LineSyl.Stress
How like her! But ’tis she herself,8······˘/
Comes up the crowded street,6···/˘·
How little did I think, the morn,8·/˘·····
My only love to meet!6·/˘···
Whose else that motion and that mien?8···/˘···
Whose else that airy tread?6···/˘·
For one strange moment I forgot8···/˘·˘/
My only love was dead.6·/˘···

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.

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