Who Knows?
They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows?They say one king is doddering and grey.They say one king is slack and sick of mind,A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play.
Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place?Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane?Their place of maudlin, slavering conferenceTill every far-off farmstead goes insane?
Words in this poem
- bane v. t.
- To be the bane of; to ruin. Fuller.
- maudlin a.
- Tearful; easily moved to tears; exciting to tears; excessively sentimental; weak and silly. [From Maudlin, a contr. of Magdalen, OE. Maudeleyne, who is drawn by painters with eyes swelled and red with weeping.]
- slavering a.
- Drooling; defiling with saliva.
- farmstead n.
- A farm with the building upon it; a homestead on a farm.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Who Knows? is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Congo, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #1021; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Vachel Lindsay, Who Knows?, in The Congo and Other Poems (1914), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1021, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lindsay-congo/who-knows.html, id L00999.
Form and metre
Who Knows? is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.9 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 knows · greyA · mind · playA
- 2 -A-A place · baneA · conference · insaneA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| They say one king is mad. Perhaps. Who knows? | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| They say one king is doddering and grey. | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| They say one king is slack and sick of mind, | 10 | ·········· |
| A puppet for hid strings that twitch and play. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Is Europe then to be their sprawling-place? | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Their mad-house, till it turns the wide world's bane? | 10 | ·········· |
| Their place of maudlin, slavering conference | 10 | ···/˘/˘˘/˘ |
| Till every far-off farmstead goes insane? | 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.