Thomas Rhodes
Very well, you liberals,And navigators into realms intellectual,You sailors through heights imaginative,Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets,You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits,And Tennessee Claflin Shopes—You found with all your boasted wisdomHow hard at the last it isTo keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms.While we, seekers of earth’s treasuresGetters and hoarders of gold,Are self-contained, compact, harmonized,Even to the end.
Words in this poem
- erratic a.
- Having no certain course; roving about without a fixed destination; wandering; moving; -- hence, applied to the planets as distinguished from the fixed stars. [L. erraticus, fr. errare to wander: cf. F. erratique. See Err.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Thomas Rhodes 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, Thomas Rhodes, in Spoon River Anthology (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1280, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/masters-spoon-river/thomas-rhodes.html, id L07833.
Form and metre
Thomas Rhodes is 13 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 72%). 78% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.4 syllables. 8 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 23% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
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--- liberals · intellectual · imaginative · pockets · petitsA · shopes · wisdom · isA · atoms · treasuresA · gold · harmonized · end
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Very well, you liberals, | 7 | /˘··/˘˘ |
| And navigators into realms intellectual, | 13 | ·/˘·˘····˘/˘˘ |
| You sailors through heights imaginative, | 10 | ·/˘··˘/˘˘˘ |
| Blown about by erratic currents, tumbling into air pockets, | 17 | ····˘/˘/˘/˘˘···/˘ |
| You Margaret Fuller Slacks, Petits, | 9 | ·/˘˘/˘·/˘ |
| And Tennessee Claflin Shopes— | 7 | ··˘//˘· |
| You found with all your boasted wisdom | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| How hard at the last it is | 7 | ······· |
| To keep the soul from splitting into cellular atoms. | 14 | ·····/˘··/˘˘/˘ |
| While we, seekers of earth’s treasures | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| Getters and hoarders of gold, | 7 | /˘····· |
| Are self-contained, compact, harmonized, | 9 | ··˘//˘/˘· |
| Even to the end. | 5 | /˘··· |
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.