The Giver of Stars
Hold your soul open for my welcoming.Let the quiet of your spirit bathe meWith its clear and rippled coolness,That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest,Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory.
Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me,That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire,The life and joy of tongues of flame,And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune,I may rouse the blear-eyed world,And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten.
About this text
The Giver of Stars 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, The Giver of Stars, in Sword Blades and Poppy Seed (1914), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1020, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lowell-amy-sword-blades/the-giver-of-stars.html, id L08228.
Form and metre
The Giver of Stars is 11 lines in 2 stanzas. 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.6 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 9% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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.
- 2 ---A-A me · fire · flame · tuneA · world · begottenA
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Hold your soul open for my welcoming. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘˘ |
| Let the quiet of your spirit bathe me | 10 | ··/˘··/˘·· |
| With its clear and rippled coolness, | 9 | ····/˘˘/˘ |
| That, loose-limbed and weary, I find rest, | 10 | ···˘·/˘··· |
| Outstretched upon your peace, as on a bed of ivory. | 13 | ˘/·········/˘ |
| Let the flickering flame of your soul play all about me, | 13 | ··/˘········· |
| That into my limbs may come the keenness of fire, | 12 | ········/˘·/ |
| The life and joy of tongues of flame, | 8 | ········ |
| And, going out from you, tightly strung and in tune, | 11 | ·/···/˘···· |
| I may rouse the blear-eyed world, | 7 | ······· |
| And pour into it the beauty which you have begotten. | 14 | ······/˘···˘/˘ |
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.