Obedience
Trust him in the common light;Trust him in the awesome night;
Trust him when the earth doth quake:Trust him when thy heart doth ache;
Trust him when thy brain doth reelAnd thy friend turns on his heel;
Trust him when the way is rough,Cry not yet, It is enough!
But obey with true endeavour,Else the salt hath lost his savour.
Words in this poem
- awesome a.
- Causing awe; appalling; awful; as, an awesome sight. Wright.
- ache n.
- A name given to several species of plants; as, smallage, wild celery, parsley. Holland. [F. ache, L. apium parsley.]
- endeavour v. t.
- To exert physical or intellectual strength for the attainment of; to use efforts to effect; to strive to achieve or reach; to try; to attempt. [OE. endevor; pref. en- + dever, devoir, duty, F. devoir: cf. F. se mettre en devoir de faire quelque chose to try to do a thing, to go about it. See Devoir, Deb]
- savour v. t.
- To perceive by the smell or the taste; hence, to perceive; to note. B. Jonson.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Obedience 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, Obedience, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/obedience.html, id L22307.
Form and metre
Obedience is 10 lines in 5 stanzas of 2 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, 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 AA lightA · nightA
- 2 AA quakeA · acheA
- 3 AA reelA · heelA
- 4 AA roughA · enoughA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Trust him in the common light; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Trust him in the awesome night; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Trust him when the earth doth quake: | 7 | ······· |
| Trust him when thy heart doth ache; | 7 | ······· |
| Trust him when thy brain doth reel | 7 | ······· |
| And thy friend turns on his heel; | 7 | ······· |
| Trust him when the way is rough, | 7 | ······· |
| Cry not yet, It is enough! | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| But obey with true endeavour, | 8 | ·˘/··˘/˘ |
| Else the salt hath lost his savour. | 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.