Blind Jack
I had fiddled all day at the county fair.But driving home “Butch” Weldy and Jack McGuire,Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddleTo the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horsesTill they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get outAs the carriage fell in the ditch,And was caught in the wheels and killed.There’s a blind man here with a browAs big and white as a cloud.And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest,Writers of music and tellers of storiesSit at his feet,And hear him sing of the fall of Troy.
Words in this poem
- county n.
- An earldom; the domain of a count or earl. [F. comt, fr. LL. comitatus. See Count.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Blind Jack 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, Blind Jack, in Spoon River Anthology (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1280, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/masters-spoon-river/blind-jack.html, id L07807.
Form and metre
Blind Jack is 13 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.9 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 38% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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.
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I had fiddled all day at the county fair. | 11 | ··/˘····/˘· |
| But driving home “Butch” Weldy and Jack McGuire, | 11 | ·/˘··/˘··˘/ |
| Who were roaring full, made me fiddle and fiddle | 12 | ··/˘···/˘·/˘ |
| To the song of Susie Skinner, while whipping the horses | 14 | ····/˘/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Till they ran away. Blind as I was, I tried to get out | 14 | ···˘/········· |
| As the carriage fell in the ditch, | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| And was caught in the wheels and killed. | 8 | ········ |
| There’s a blind man here with a brow | 8 | ········ |
| As big and white as a cloud. | 7 | ······· |
| And all we fiddlers, from highest to lowest, | 12 | ···/˘˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Writers of music and tellers of stories | 11 | /˘·/˘·/˘·/˘ |
| Sit at his feet, | 4 | ···· |
| And hear him sing of the fall of Troy. | 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.