The Gulf
A gulf of silence separates us from each other.I stand at one side of the gulf, you at the other.I cannot see you or hear you, yet know that you are there.Often I call you by your childish nameAnd pretend that the echo to my crying is your voice.How can we bridge the gulf? Never by speech or touch.Once I thought we might fill it quite up with tears.Now I want to shatter it with our laughter.
About this text
The Gulf is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #59276; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Katherine Mansfield, The Gulf, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59276, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/mansfield-poems/the-gulf.html, id L27581.
Form and metre
The Gulf is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
See other poems in iambic hexameter.
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------ otherA · otherA · there · name · voice · touch · tears · laughter
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A gulf of silence separates us from each other. | 13 | ···/˘/˘····/˘ |
| I stand at one side of the gulf, you at the other. | 13 | ···········/˘ |
| I cannot see you or hear you, yet know that you are there. | 14 | ·/˘··········· |
| Often I call you by your childish name | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| And pretend that the echo to my crying is your voice. | 14 | ·˘/··/˘··/˘··· |
| How can we bridge the gulf? Never by speech or touch. | 11 | ······/···· |
| Once I thought we might fill it quite up with tears. | 11 | ··········· |
| Now I want to shatter it with our laughter. | 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.