Who Lights the Fire?
Who lights the fire--that forth so gracefullyAnd freely frolicketh the fairy smoke?Some pretty one who never felt the yoke--Glad girl, or maiden more sedate than she.
Pedant it cannot, villain cannot be!Some genius, may-be, his own symbol woke;But puritan, nor rogue in virtue's cloke,Nor kitchen-maid has done it certainly!
Ha, ha! you cannot find the lighter outFor all the blue smoke's pantomimic gesture--His name or nature, sex or age or vesture!The fire was lit by human care, no doubt--But now the smoke is Nature's tributary,Dancing 'twixt man and nothing like a fairy.
Words in this poem
- pedant n.
- A schoolmaster; a pedagogue. [F. pédant, It. pedante, fr. Gr. pai^s boy. See Pedagogue.]
- pantomimic a.
- Of or pertaining to the pantomime; representing by dumb show. [Cf. F. pantomimique.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Who Lights the Fire? 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, Who Lights the Fire?, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/who-lights-the-fire.html, id L22396.
Form and metre
Who Lights the Fire? is 14 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See 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 -AA- gracefully · smokeA · yokeA · she
- 2 -AA- be · wokeA · clokeA · certainly
- 3 ABBACC outA · gestureB · vestureB · doubtA · tributaryC · fairyC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Who lights the fire--that forth so gracefully | 11 | ···/˘···/˘˘ |
| And freely frolicketh the fairy smoke? | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Some pretty one who never felt the yoke-- | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Glad girl, or maiden more sedate than she. | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
| Pedant it cannot, villain cannot be! | 10 | /˘·/˘/˘/˘· |
| Some genius, may-be, his own symbol woke; | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| But puritan, nor rogue in virtue's cloke, | 10 | ·/˘˘···/˘· |
| Nor kitchen-maid has done it certainly! | 10 | ·/˘····/˘˘ |
| Ha, ha! you cannot find the lighter out | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| For all the blue smoke's pantomimic gesture-- | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| His name or nature, sex or age or vesture! | 11 | ···/˘····/˘ |
| The fire was lit by human care, no doubt-- | 10 | ·/···/˘··· |
| But now the smoke is Nature's tributary, | 11 | ·····/˘/˘·˘ |
| Dancing 'twixt man and nothing like a fairy. | 11 | /˘···/˘··/˘ |
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.