Ii.—Sweeping the Floor
Sweep and sweep and sweep the floor,Sweep the dust, pick up the pin;Make it clean from fire to door,Clean for father to come in!
Mother said that God goes sweeping,Looking, sweeping with a broom,All the time that we are sleeping,For a shilling in the room:
Did he drop it out of glory,Walking far above the birds?Or did parson make the storyFor the thinking afterwards?
If I were the swept-for shillingI would hearken through the gloom;Roll out fast, and fall down willingRight before the sweeping broom!
About this text
Ii.—Sweeping the Floor 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, Ii.—Sweeping the Floor, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/ii-sweeping-the-floor.html, id L22514.
Form and metre
Ii.—Sweeping the Floor is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in trochaic 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 ABAB floorA · pinB · doorA · inB
- 2 ABAB sweepingA · broomB · sleepingA · roomB
- 3 ABAB gloryA · birdsB · storyA · afterwardsB
- 4 ABAB shillingA · gloomB · willingA · broomB
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sweep and sweep and sweep the floor, | 7 | ······· |
| Sweep the dust, pick up the pin; | 7 | ······· |
| Make it clean from fire to door, | 7 | ····/·· |
| Clean for father to come in! | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Mother said that God goes sweeping, | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| Looking, sweeping with a broom, | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| All the time that we are sleeping, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| For a shilling in the room: | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Did he drop it out of glory, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Walking far above the birds? | 7 | /˘····· |
| Or did parson make the story | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| For the thinking afterwards? | 7 | ··/˘/˘˘ |
| If I were the swept-for shilling | 8 | ······/˘ |
| I would hearken through the gloom; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Roll out fast, and fall down willing | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Right before the sweeping broom! | 7 | ····/˘· |
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.