The Wild Duck
Twilight. Red in the west.Dimness. A glow on the wood.The teams plod home to rest.The wild duck come to glean.O souls not understood,What a wild cry in the pool;What things have the farm ducks seenThat they cry so--huddle and cry?
Only the soul that goes.Eager. Eager. Flying.Over the globe of the moon,Over the wood that glows.Wings linked. Necks a-strain,A rush and a wild crying.
A cry of the long painIn the reeds of a steel lagoon.In a land that no man knows.
Words in this poem
- plod v. i.
- To travel slowly but steadily; to trudge. [Gf. Gael. plod a clod, a pool; also, to strike or pelt with a clod or clods.]
- glean n.
- Cleaning; afterbirth. Holland.
- lagoon n.
- A shallow sound, channel, pond, or lake, especially one into which the sea flows; as, the lagoons of Venice. [It. or Sp. laguna, L. lacuna ditch, pool, pond,lacus lake. See Lake, and cf. Lacuna.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Wild Duck 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, The Wild Duck, 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/the-wild-duck.html, id L25027.
Form and metre
The Wild Duck is 17 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 77%).
See other poems in iambic 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 ABACB-C- westA · woodB · restA · gleanC · understoodB · pool · seenC · cry
- 2 DEFDGE goesD · flyingE · moonF · glowsD · strainG · cryingE
- 3 GFD painG · lagoonF · knowsD
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Twilight. Red in the west. | 6 | /····· |
| Dimness. A glow on the wood. | 7 | /˘····· |
| The teams plod home to rest. | 6 | ······ |
| The wild duck come to glean. | 6 | ······ |
| O souls not understood, | 6 | ····˘/ |
| What a wild cry in the pool; | 7 | ······· |
| What things have the farm ducks seen | 7 | ······· |
| That they cry so--huddle and cry? | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| Only the soul that goes. | 6 | /˘···· |
| Eager. Eager. Flying. | 6 | /˘/˘/˘ |
| Over the globe of the moon, | 6 | ······ |
| Over the wood that glows. | 6 | ······ |
| Wings linked. Necks a-strain, | 6 | ··˘··· |
| A rush and a wild crying. | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| A cry of the long pain | 6 | ······ |
| In the reeds of a steel lagoon. | 8 | ······˘/ |
| In a land that no man knows. | 7 | ······· |
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.