Ollie McGee
Have you seen walking through the villageA man with downcast eyes and haggard face?That is my husband who, by secret crueltyNever to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty;Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth,And with broken pride and shameful humility,I sank into the grave.But what think you gnaws at my husband’s heart?The face of what I was, the face of what he made me!These are driving him to the place where I lie.In death, therefore, I am avenged.
Words in this poem
- haggard a.
- Wild or intractable; disposed to break away from duty; untamed; as, a haggard or refractory hawk. Shak [F. hagard; of German origin, and prop. meaning, of the hegde or woods, wild, untamed. See Hedge, 1st Haw, and -ard.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Ollie McGee 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, Ollie McGee, in Spoon River Anthology (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1280, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/masters-spoon-river/ollie-mcgee.html, id L07744.
Form and metre
Ollie McGee is 11 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.4 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 18% 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 --------AA- village · face · cruelty · beauty · teeth · humility · grave · heart · meA · lieA · avenged
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Have you seen walking through the village | 9 | ···/˘··/˘ |
| A man with downcast eyes and haggard face? | 10 | ···/···/˘· |
| That is my husband who, by secret cruelty | 11 | ···/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Never to be told, robbed me of my youth and my beauty; | 14 | /˘··········/˘ |
| Till at last, wrinkled and with yellow teeth, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And with broken pride and shameful humility, | 12 | ··/˘··/˘˘/˘˘ |
| I sank into the grave. | 6 | ······ |
| But what think you gnaws at my husband’s heart? | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| The face of what I was, the face of what he made me! | 13 | ············· |
| These are driving him to the place where I lie. | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| In death, therefore, I am avenged. | 8 | ······˘/ |
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.