Lost but Safe
Lost the little one roams about,Pathway or shelter none can find;Blinking stars are coming out;No one is moving but the wind;It is no use to cry or shout,All the world is still as a mouse;One thing only eases her mind:"Father knows I'm not in the house!"
Words in this poem
- pathway n.
- A footpath; a beaten track; any path or course. Also used figuratively.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Lost but Safe 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, Lost but Safe, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/lost-but-safe.html, id L22315.
Form and metre
Lost but Safe is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABACBC. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
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 ABABACBC aboutA · findB · outA · windB · shoutA · mouseC · mindB · houseC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Lost the little one roams about, | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Pathway or shelter none can find; | 8 | /··/˘··· |
| Blinking stars are coming out; | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| No one is moving but the wind; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| It is no use to cry or shout, | 8 | ········ |
| All the world is still as a mouse; | 8 | ········ |
| One thing only eases her mind: | 8 | ··/˘/˘·· |
| "Father knows I'm not in the house!" | 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.