Two at a Fireside
I built a chimney for a comrade old,I did the service not for hope or hire--And then I traveled on in winter’s cold,Yet all the day I glowed before the fire.
Words in this poem
- chimney n.
- A fireplace or hearth. Sir W. Raleigh.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Two at a Fireside 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, Two at a Fireside, 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/two-at-a-fireside.html, id L24759.
Form and metre
Two at a Fireside is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. 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.
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 ABAB oldA · hireB · coldA · fireB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I built a chimney for a comrade old, | 10 | ···/˘··/·· |
| I did the service not for hope or hire-- | 11 | ···/˘····/˘ |
| And then I traveled on in winter’s cold, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Yet all the day I glowed before the fire. | 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.