Waiting
Lie, little cow, and chew thy cud,The farmer soon will shift thy tether;Chirp, linnet, on the frozen mud,Sun and song will come together;Wait, soul, for God, and thou shalt bud,He waits thy waiting with his weather.
Words in this poem
- tether n.
- A long rope or chain by which an animal is fastened, as to a stake, so that it can range or feed only within certain limits. [Formerly tedder, OE. tedir; akin to LG. tider, tier, Icel. tjo, Dan. töir. *64.]
- shalt
- 2d per. sing. of Shall.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Waiting 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, Waiting, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/waiting.html, id L22314.
Form and metre
Waiting is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
See other poems in iambic 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 ABABAB cudA · tetherB · mudA · togetherB · budA · weatherB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Lie, little cow, and chew thy cud, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The farmer soon will shift thy tether; | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| Chirp, linnet, on the frozen mud, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Sun and song will come together; | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| Wait, soul, for God, and thou shalt bud, | 8 | ········ |
| He waits thy waiting with his weather. | 9 | ···/˘··/˘ |
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.