In High Sierras
There at a certain hour of the deep night,A gray cliff with a demon face comes up,Wrinkled and old, behind the peaks, and withAn anxious look peers at the Zodiac.
About this text
In High Sierras 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, In High Sierras, 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/in-high-sierras.html, id L24765.
Form and metre
In High Sierras is 4 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| There at a certain hour of the deep night, | 10 | ···/˘/···· |
| A gray cliff with a demon face comes up, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Wrinkled and old, behind the peaks, and with | 10 | /˘········ |
| An anxious look peers at the Zodiac. | 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.