The Sound of the Sea
The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep,And round the pebbly beaches far and wideI heard the first wave of the rising tideRush onward with uninterrupted sweep;A voice out of the silence of the deep,A sound mysteriously multipliedAs of a cataract from the mountain's side,Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep.So comes to us at times, from the unknownAnd inaccessible solitudes of being,The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul;And inspirations, that we deem our own,Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeingOf things beyond our reason or control.
Words in this poem
- pebbly a.
- Full of pebbles; pebbled.
- mysteriously adv.
- In a mysterious manner.
- deem v. t.
- To decide; to judge; to sentence; to condemn. [OE. demen to judge, condemn, AS. d, fr. d doom; akin to OFries. d, OS. ad, D. doemen, OHG. tuommen, Icel. dæma, Sw. dömma, Dan. dömme, Goth. d. See Doom, n., an]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Sound of the Sea 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, The Sound of the Sea, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/the-sound-of-the-sea.html, id L17745.
Form and metre
The Sound of the Sea is 14 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBAABBACDECDE, the pattern of the Italian sonnet. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 36% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other Italian sonnets, 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 ABBAABBACDECDE sleepA · wideB · tideB · sweepA · deepA · multipliedB · sideB · steepA · unknownC · beingD · soulE · ownC · foreseeingD · controlE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The sea awoke at midnight from its sleep, | 10 | ··˘/·/···· |
| And round the pebbly beaches far and wide | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| I heard the first wave of the rising tide | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Rush onward with uninterrupted sweep; | 10 | ·/˘··˘˘/˘· |
| A voice out of the silence of the deep, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| A sound mysteriously multiplied | 10 | ···/˘˘˘/˘· |
| As of a cataract from the mountain's side, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Or roar of winds upon a wooded steep. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| So comes to us at times, from the unknown | 10 | ········˘/ |
| And inaccessible solitudes of being, | 10 | ··˘/˘/˘··/ |
| The rushing of the sea-tides of the soul; | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And inspirations, that we deem our own, | 10 | ··˘/˘···/· |
| Are some divine foreshadowing and foreseeing | 11 | ··˘/˘/˘·˘/˘ |
| Of things beyond our reason or control. | 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.