Straw in the Street
Straw in the street where I pass to-dayDulls the sound of the wheels and feet.’Tis for a failing life they layStraw in the street.
Here, where the pulses of London beat,Someone strives with the Presence grey;Ah, is it victory or defeat?
The hurrying people go their way,Pause and jostle and pass and greet;For life, for death, are they treading, say,Straw in the street?
Words in this poem
- defeat v. t.
- To undo; to disfigure; to destroy. [From F. défait, OF. desfait, p. p. ofe défaire, OF. desfaire, to undo; L. dis- + facere to do. See Feat, Fact, and cf. Disfashion.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Straw in the Street 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, Straw in the Street, in A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56974, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/levy-london-plane-tree/straw-in-the-street.html, id L21526.
Form and metre
Straw in the Street is 11 lines in 3 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is dactylic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
See other poems in dactylic trimeter.
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 ABAB dayA · feetB · layA · streetB
- 2 A-A beatA · grey · defeatA
- 3 ABAB wayA · greetB · sayA · streetB
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 dactylic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Straw in the street where I pass to-day | 9 | ········· |
| Dulls the sound of the wheels and feet. | 8 | ········ |
| ’Tis for a failing life they lay | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Straw in the street. | 4 | ···· |
| Here, where the pulses of London beat, | 9 | ···/˘·/˘· |
| Someone strives with the Presence grey; | 8 | /····/˘· |
| Ah, is it victory or defeat? | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| The hurrying people go their way, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Pause and jostle and pass and greet; | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| For life, for death, are they treading, say, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| Straw in the street? | 4 | ···· |
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.