Edith. Edith Christison
ENDICOTT (with eagerness).The daughterOf Wenlock Christison?
I am his daughter.
Your father hath given us trouble many times.A bold man and a violent, who setsAt naught the authority of our Church and State,And is in banishment on pain of death.Where are you living?
About this text
Edith. Edith Christison is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Project Gutenberg ebook #1365; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Edith. Edith Christison, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/edith-edith-christison.html, id L17963.
Form and metre
Edith. Edith Christison is 9 lines in 3 verse paragraphs. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 80% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.4 syllables. 5 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 22% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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.
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| ENDICOTT (with eagerness). | 7 | /˘··/˘˘ |
| The daughter | 3 | ·/˘ |
| Of Wenlock Christison? | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| I am his daughter. | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Your father hath given us trouble many times. | 10 | ·/˘·/·/˘/· |
| A bold man and a violent, who sets | 10 | ·····/˘˘·· |
| At naught the authority of our Church and State, | 11 | ···˘/˘·/··· |
| And is in banishment on pain of death. | 10 | ···/˘˘···· |
| Where are you living? | 5 | ···/˘ |
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.