Come Down
Still am I hauntingThy door with my prayers;Still they are pantingUp thy steep stairs!Wouldst thou not ratherCome down to my heart,And there, O my Father,Be what thou art?
About this text
Come Down 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, Come Down, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/come-down.html, id L22385.
Form and metre
Come Down is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
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 -A-A-B-B haunting · prayersA · panting · stairsA · rather · heartB · father · artB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Still am I haunting | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Thy door with my prayers; | 5 | ····· |
| Still they are panting | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Up thy steep stairs! | 4 | ···· |
| Wouldst thou not rather | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Come down to my heart, | 5 | ····· |
| And there, O my Father, | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Be what thou art? | 4 | ···· |
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.