Lydia Humphrey
Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church,With my Bible under my arm’Till I was gray and old;Unwedded, alone in the world,Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation,And children in the church.I know they laughed and thought me queer.I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight,Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church,Disdaining me, not seeing me.But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me.It was the vision, vision, vision of the poetsDemocratized!
About this text
Lydia Humphrey 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, Lydia Humphrey, in Spoon River Anthology (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1280, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/masters-spoon-river/lydia-humphrey.html, id L07955.
Form and metre
Lydia Humphrey is 13 lines in a single stanza. 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.7 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 15% 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.
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--ABB-- churchA · arm · old · world · congregation · churchA · queer · sunlight · churchA · meB · meB · poets · democratized
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Back and forth, back and forth, to and from the church, | 11 | ··········· |
| With my Bible under my arm | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| ’Till I was gray and old; | 6 | ······ |
| Unwedded, alone in the world, | 8 | ˘/˘˘/··· |
| Finding brothers and sisters in the congregation, | 13 | /˘/˘·/˘···˘/˘ |
| And children in the church. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| I know they laughed and thought me queer. | 8 | ········ |
| I knew of the eagle souls that flew high in the sunlight, | 14 | ····/˘······/· |
| Above the spire of the church, and laughed at the church, | 12 | ············ |
| Disdaining me, not seeing me. | 8 | ˘/˘··/˘· |
| But if the high air was sweet to them, sweet was the church to me. | 15 | ··············· |
| It was the vision, vision, vision of the poets | 13 | ···/˘/˘/˘··/˘ |
| Democratized! | 4 | ˘/˘· |
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.