Storm-Racked
How should I sing when buffeting salt wavesAnd stung with bitter surges, in whose mightI toss, a cockleshell? The dreadful nightMarshals its undefeated dark and ravesIn brutal madness, reeling over gravesOf vanquished men, long-sunken out of sight,Sent wailing down to glut the ghoulish spriteWho haunts foul seaweed forests and their caves.No parting cloud reveals a watery star,My cries are washed away upon the wind,My cramped and blistering hands can find no spar,My eyes with hope o'erstrained, are growing blind.But painted on the sky great visions burn,My voice, oblation from a shattered urn!
Words in this poem
- buffeting n.
- A striking with the hand.
- cockleshell n.
- One of the shells or valves of a cockle.
- dreadful a.
- Full of dread or terror; fearful.
- ghoulish a.
- Characteristic of a ghoul; vampirelike; hyenalike.
- sprite n.
- A spirit; a soul; a shade; also, an apparition. See Spright. [OE. sprit, F. esprit, fr. L. spiritus. See Spirit, and cf. Sprightly.]
- oblation n.
- The act of offering, or of making an offering. [L. oblatio: cf. F. oblation. See Oblate.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Storm-Racked is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sword Blades and Poppy Seed, Project Gutenberg ebook #1020; 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, Storm-Racked, in Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1020, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lowell-amy-sword-blades/storm-racked.html, id L08205.
Form and metre
Storm-Racked is 14 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBAABBACDCDEE. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 43% 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 ABBAABBACDCDEE wavesA · mightB · nightB · ravesA · gravesA · sightB · spriteB · cavesA · starC · windD · sparC · blindD · burnE · urnE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| How should I sing when buffeting salt waves | 10 | ·····˘/˘·· |
| And stung with bitter surges, in whose might | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| I toss, a cockleshell? The dreadful night | 10 | ···/˘˘·/˘· |
| Marshals its undefeated dark and raves | 10 | /˘··˘/˘··· |
| In brutal madness, reeling over graves | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘··· |
| Of vanquished men, long-sunken out of sight, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Sent wailing down to glut the ghoulish sprite | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Who haunts foul seaweed forests and their caves. | 10 | ···/·/˘··· |
| No parting cloud reveals a watery star, | 10 | ·/˘·˘/·/˘· |
| My cries are washed away upon the wind, | 10 | ····˘/···· |
| My cramped and blistering hands can find no spar, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| My eyes with hope o'erstrained, are growing blind. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| But painted on the sky great visions burn, | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| My voice, oblation from a shattered urn! | 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.