Amanda Barker
Henry got me with child,Knowing that I could not bring forth lifeWithout losing my own.In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust.Traveler, it is believed in the village where I livedThat Henry loved me with a husband’s loveBut I proclaim from the dustThat he slew me to gratify his hatred.
About this text
Amanda Barker is in the public domain. This text is taken from Spoon River Anthology, Project Gutenberg ebook #1280; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edgar Lee Masters, Amanda Barker, in Spoon River Anthology (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1280, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/masters-spoon-river/amanda-barker.html, id L07749.
Form and metre
Amanda Barker is 8 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.5 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 50% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 ---A--A- child · life · own · dustA · lived · love · dustA · hatred
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Henry got me with child, | 6 | /˘···· |
| Knowing that I could not bring forth life | 9 | /˘······· |
| Without losing my own. | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| In my youth therefore I entered the portals of dust. | 13 | ······/˘·/˘·· |
| Traveler, it is believed in the village where I lived | 14 | /˘˘··˘/··/˘··· |
| That Henry loved me with a husband’s love | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| But I proclaim from the dust | 7 | ··˘/··· |
| That he slew me to gratify his hatred. | 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.