Invocation
O wanderer into many brains,O spark the emperor's purple hides,You sow the dusk with fiery grainsWhen the gold horseman rides.O beauty on the darkness hurled,Be it through me you shame the world.
About this text
Invocation is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Story of a Round-House, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #40717; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Masefield, Invocation, in The Story of a Round-House, and Other Poems (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #40717, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/masefield-round-house/invocation.html, id L25011.
Form and metre
Invocation is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
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 ABABCC brainsA · hidesB · grainsA · ridesB · hurledC · worldC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O wanderer into many brains, | 9 | ·/˘˘··/˘· |
| O spark the emperor's purple hides, | 9 | ···/˘˘/˘· |
| You sow the dusk with fiery grains | 9 | ·····/˘˘· |
| When the gold horseman rides. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| O beauty on the darkness hurled, | 9 | ·/˘··/˘·˘ |
| Be it through me you shame the world. | 8 | ········ |
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.