The Tragedy
Oh, the fret of the brain,And the wounds and the worry;Oh, the thought of love and the thought of death--And the soul in its silent hurry.
But the stars break above,And the fields flower under;And the tragical life of man goes on,Surrounded by beauty and wonder.
Words in this poem
- tragical a.
- Of or pertaining to tragedy; of the nature or character of tragedy; as, a tragic poem; a tragic play or representation. [L. tragicus, Gr.tragique.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Tragedy 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, The Tragedy, 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/the-tragedy.html, id L24784.
Form and metre
The Tragedy is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is anapaestic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%).
See other poems in anapaestic trimeter.
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 -A-A brain · worryA · death · hurryA
- 2 -A-A above · underA · on · wonderA
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 anapaestic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Oh, the fret of the brain, | 6 | ······ |
| And the wounds and the worry; | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Oh, the thought of love and the thought of death-- | 10 | ·········· |
| And the soul in its silent hurry. | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| But the stars break above, | 6 | ······ |
| And the fields flower under; | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| And the tragical life of man goes on, | 10 | ·········· |
| Surrounded by beauty and wonder. | 9 | ˘/˘·/˘·/˘ |
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.