Concentration
A hut green-shadowed among firs, --A sun that slopes in amber air, --Lone wandering, my head I bare,While some far thrush the silence stirs.
No flocks of wild geese thither fly,And she -- ah! she is far away;Yet all my thoughts behold her stay,As in the golden hours gone by.
The clouds scarce dim the water's sheen,The moon-bathed islands wanly show,And sweet words falter to and fro --Though the great River rolls between.
Words in this poem
- lone n.
- A lane. See Loanin.
- scarce a.
- Not plentiful or abundant; in small quantity in proportion to the demand; not easily to be procured; rare; uncommon. [OE. scars, OF. escars, eschars, LL. scarpsus, for L. excerptus, p. p. of excerpere to pick out, and hence to contract, to shorten; ex (see Ex-) + carpere. See C]
- sheen v. i.
- To shine; to glisten.
- wanly adv.
- In a wan, or pale, manner.
- falter v. t.
- To thrash in the chaff; also, to cleanse or sift, as barley.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Concentration is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Lute of Jade, Project Gutenberg ebook #390, the L. Cranmer-Byng translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Various, Concentration, in A Lute of Jade (1909), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #390, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lute-of-jade/concentration.html, id L15620.
Form and metre
Concentration is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.2 syllables.
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.
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 ABBA firsA · airB · bareB · stirsA
- 2 ABBA flyA · awayB · stayB · byA
- 3 ABBA sheenA · showB · froB · betweenA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A hut green-shadowed among firs, -- | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| A sun that slopes in amber air, -- | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Lone wandering, my head I bare, | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| While some far thrush the silence stirs. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| No flocks of wild geese thither fly, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And she -- ah! she is far away; | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Yet all my thoughts behold her stay, | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| As in the golden hours gone by. | 8 | ···/˘/·· |
| The clouds scarce dim the water's sheen, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The moon-bathed islands wanly show, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| And sweet words falter to and fro -- | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Though the great River rolls between. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
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.