Ernest Hyde
My mind was a mirror:It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew.In youth my mind was just a mirrorIn a rapidly flying car,Which catches and loses bits of the landscape.Then in timeGreat scratches were made on the mirror,Letting the outside world come in,And letting my inner self look out.For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow,A birth with gains and losses.The mind sees the world as a thing apart,And the soul makes the world at one with itself.A mirror scratched reflects no image—And this is the silence of wisdom.
About this text
Ernest Hyde 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, Ernest Hyde, in Spoon River Anthology (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1280, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/masters-spoon-river/ernest-hyde.html, id L07840.
Form and metre
Ernest Hyde is 15 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 76%). 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.7 syllables. 7 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 13% 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---A-------- mirrorA · knew · mirrorA · car · landscape · time · mirrorA · in · out · sorrow · losses · apart · itself · image · wisdom
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 |
|---|---|---|
| My mind was a mirror: | 6 | ····/˘ |
| It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew. | 10 | ·········· |
| In youth my mind was just a mirror | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| In a rapidly flying car, | 8 | ··/˘˘/˘· |
| Which catches and loses bits of the landscape. | 11 | ·/˘·/˘···/· |
| Then in time | 3 | ··· |
| Great scratches were made on the mirror, | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| Letting the outside world come in, | 8 | /˘·//··· |
| And letting my inner self look out. | 9 | ·/˘·/˘··· |
| For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow, | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| A birth with gains and losses. | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| The mind sees the world as a thing apart, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| And the soul makes the world at one with itself. | 11 | ·········˘/ |
| A mirror scratched reflects no image— | 9 | ·/˘·˘/·/˘ |
| And this is the silence of wisdom. | 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.