A Prisoner
The hinges are so rustyThe door is fixed and fast;The windows are so dustyThe sun looks in aghast:Knock out the glass, I pray,Or dash the door away,Or break the house down bodily,And let my soul go free!
About this text
A Prisoner is in the public domain. This text is taken from The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #9984; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: George MacDonald, A Prisoner, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/a-prisoner.html, id L22319.
Form and metre
A Prisoner is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 ABABCC-- rustyA · fastB · dustyA · aghastB · prayC · awayC · bodily · free
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The hinges are so rusty | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| The door is fixed and fast; | 6 | ······ |
| The windows are so dusty | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| The sun looks in aghast: | 6 | ····˘/ |
| Knock out the glass, I pray, | 6 | ······ |
| Or dash the door away, | 6 | ····˘/ |
| Or break the house down bodily, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| And let my soul go free! | 6 | ······ |
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.