After Reading Shakspere
Blithe Fancy lightly builds with airy handsOr on the edges of the darkness peers,Breathless and frightened at the Voice she hears:Imagination (lo! the sky expands)Travels the blue arch and Cimmerian sands,--Homeless on earth, the pilgrim of the spheres,The rush of light before the hurrying years,The Voice that cries in unfamiliar lands.
Men weigh the moons that flood with eerie lightThe dusky vales of Saturn--wood and stream;But who shall follow on the awful sweepOf Neptune through the dim and dreadful deep?Onward he wanders in the unknown night,And we are shadows moving in a dream.
Words in this poem
- blithe a.
- Gay; merry; sprightly; joyous; glad; cheerful; as, a blithe spirit. [AS. bli blithe, kind; akin to Goth. blei kind, Icel. bli mild, gentle, Dan. & Sw. blid gentle, D. blijd blithe, OHG. blidi kind, blithe.]
- breathless a.
- Spent with labor or violent action; out of breath.
- cimmerian a.
- Pertaining to the Cimmerii, a fabulous people, said to have lived, in very ancient times, in profound and perpetual darkness. [L. Cimmerius.]
- homeless a.
- Destitute of a home. [AS.hamleas.]
- eerie a.
- Serving to inspire fear, esp. a dread of seeing ghosts; wild; weird; as, eerie stories. [Scotch, fr. AS. earh timid.]
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- dreadful a.
- Full of dread or terror; fearful.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
After Reading Shakspere is in the public domain. This text is taken from The man with the hoe, and other poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #67012; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edwin Markham, After Reading Shakspere, in The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #67012, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/markham-man-with-hoe/after-reading-shakspere.html, id L24755.
Form and metre
After Reading Shakspere is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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 ABBAABBA handsA · peersB · hearsB · expandsA · sandsA · spheresB · yearsB · landsA
- 2 ABCCAB lightA · streamB · sweepC · deepC · nightA · dreamB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Blithe Fancy lightly builds with airy hands | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Or on the edges of the darkness peers, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Breathless and frightened at the Voice she hears: | 10 | /˘·/˘····· |
| Imagination (lo! the sky expands) | 10 | ˘·˘/˘···˘/ |
| Travels the blue arch and Cimmerian sands,-- | 11 | /˘····˘/˘˘· |
| Homeless on earth, the pilgrim of the spheres, | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| The rush of light before the hurrying years, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| The Voice that cries in unfamiliar lands. | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| Men weigh the moons that flood with eerie light | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| The dusky vales of Saturn--wood and stream; | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| But who shall follow on the awful sweep | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Of Neptune through the dim and dreadful deep? | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Onward he wanders in the unknown night, | 10 | /˘·/˘··˘/· |
| And we are shadows moving in a dream. | 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.