Talk
They took dead men's soulsAnd pinned them on their breasts for ornament;Their cuff-links and tiarasWere gems dug from a grave;They were ghouls battening on exhumed thoughts;And I took a green liqueur from a servantSo that he might come near meAnd give me the comfort of a living thing.
Words in this poem
- battening n.
- Furring done with small pieces nailed directly upon the wall.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Talk is in the public domain. This text is taken from Men, Women and Ghosts, Project Gutenberg ebook #841; 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 Lowell, Talk, in Men, Women and Ghosts (1916), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #841, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lowell-amy-men-women-ghosts/talk.html, id L24284.
Form and metre
Talk is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 73%).
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.
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 took dead men's souls | 5 | ····· |
| And pinned them on their breasts for ornament; | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Their cuff-links and tiaras | 7 | ····˘/˘ |
| Were gems dug from a grave; | 6 | ······ |
| They were ghouls battening on exhumed thoughts; | 10 | ···/˘˘·˘/· |
| And I took a green liqueur from a servant | 11 | ·····˘/··/˘ |
| So that he might come near me | 7 | ······· |
| And give me the comfort of a living thing. | 11 | ····/˘··/˘· |
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.