Death
Yes, there is one who makes us all lay downOur mushroom vanities, our speculations,Our well-set theories and calculations,Our workman's jacket or our monarch's crown!To him alike the country and the town,Barbaric hordes or civilized nations,Men of all names and ranks and occupations,Squire, parson, lawyer, Jones, or Smith, or Brown!He stops the carter: the uplifted whipFalls dreamily among the horses' straw;He stops the helmsman, and the gallant shipHoldeth to westward by another law;No one will see him, no one ever saw,But he sees all and lets not any slip.
Words in this poem
- barbaric a.
- Of, or from, barbarian nations; foreign; -- often with reference to barbarous nations of east. [L. barbaricus foreign, barbaric, Gr. .]
- dreamily adv.
- As if in a dream; softly; slowly; languidly.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Death 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, Death, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/death.html, id L22487.
Form and metre
Death is 14 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 57% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 ABBAABBACDCDDC downA · speculationsB · calculationsB · crownA · townA · nationsB · occupationsB · brownA · whipC · strawD · shipC · lawD · sawD · slipC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Yes, there is one who makes us all lay down | 10 | ·········· |
| Our mushroom vanities, our speculations, | 11 | //˘/˘˘/·˘/˘ |
| Our well-set theories and calculations, | 11 | /˘··/˘··˘/˘ |
| Our workman's jacket or our monarch's crown! | 10 | //˘/˘·//·· |
| To him alike the country and the town, | 10 | ··˘/·/˘··· |
| Barbaric hordes or civilized nations, | 10 | ˘/˘··/˘·/˘ |
| Men of all names and ranks and occupations, | 11 | ········˘/˘ |
| Squire, parson, lawyer, Jones, or Smith, or Brown! | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| He stops the carter: the uplifted whip | 10 | ···/˘·/˘˘· |
| Falls dreamily among the horses' straw; | 10 | ·/˘˘···/˘· |
| He stops the helmsman, and the gallant ship | 10 | ···/···/˘· |
| Holdeth to westward by another law; | 10 | /˘·/˘·˘/˘· |
| No one will see him, no one ever saw, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| But he sees all and lets not any slip. | 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.