Deacon Taylor
I belonged to the church,And to the party of prohibition;And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon.In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver,For every noon for thirty years,I slipped behind the prescription partitionIn Trainor’s drug storeAnd poured a generous drinkFrom the bottle marked “Spiritus frumenti.”
Words in this poem
- watermelon n.
- The very large ovoid or roundish fruit of a cucurbitaceous plant (Citrullus vulgaris) of many varieties; also, the plant itself.
- generous a.
- Of honorable birth or origin; highborn. [F. généreux, fr. L. generous of noble birth, noble, excellent, magnanimous, fr. genus birth, race: cf. It. generoso. See 2d Gender.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Deacon Taylor 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, Deacon Taylor, in Spoon River Anthology (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1280, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/masters-spoon-river/deacon-taylor.html, id L07792.
Form and metre
Deacon Taylor is 9 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%). 79% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.4 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 33% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 -A---A--- church · prohibitionA · watermelon · liver · years · partitionA · store · drink · frumenti
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 belonged to the church, | 6 | ·˘/··· |
| And to the party of prohibition; | 10 | ···/˘··˘/˘ |
| And the villagers thought I died of eating watermelon. | 15 | ··/˘˘····/˘/˘·˘ |
| In truth I had cirrhosis of the liver, | 11 | ····˘/˘··/˘ |
| For every noon for thirty years, | 9 | ·/˘˘··/˘· |
| I slipped behind the prescription partition | 11 | ·····˘/˘˘/˘ |
| In Trainor’s drug store | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| And poured a generous drink | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| From the bottle marked “Spiritus frumenti.” | 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.