The Secret
In the profoundest oceanThere is a rainbow shell,It is always there, shining most stillyUnder the greatest storm wavesAnd under the happy little wavesThat the old Greek called ‘ripples of laughter.’And you listen, the rainbow shellSings—in the profoundest ocean.It is always there, singing most silently!
Words in this poem
- stilly a.
- Still; quiet; calm.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Secret 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 Secret, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59276, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/mansfield-poems/the-secret.html, id L27593.
Form and metre
The Secret is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 77%).
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 AB-CC-BA- oceanA · shellB · stilly · wavesC · wavesC · laughter · shellB · oceanA · silently
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 |
|---|---|---|
| In the profoundest ocean | 7 | ··˘/˘/˘ |
| There is a rainbow shell, | 6 | ···/·· |
| It is always there, shining most stilly | 10 | ··/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Under the greatest storm waves | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| And under the happy little waves | 9 | ····/˘/˘· |
| That the old Greek called ‘ripples of laughter.’ | 10 | ·····/˘·/˘ |
| And you listen, the rainbow shell | 8 | ··/˘·/·· |
| Sings—in the profoundest ocean. | 8 | ···˘/˘/˘ |
| It is always there, singing most silently! | 10 | ··/˘·/˘·/˘ |
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.