O Word I Love to Sing
O word I love to sing! thou art too tenderFor all the passions agitating me;For all my bitterness thou art too tender,I cannot pour my red soul into thee.
O haunting melody! thou art too slender,Too fragile like a globe of crystal glass;For all my stormy thoughts thou art too slender,The burden from my bosom will not pass.
O tender word! O melody so slender!O tears of passion saturate with brine,O words, unwilling words, ye can not renderMy hatred for the foe of me and mine.
About this text
O Word I Love to Sing is in the public domain. This text is taken from Harlem shadows, Project Gutenberg ebook #64989; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Claude McKay, O Word I Love to Sing, in Harlem Shadows (1922), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #64989, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/mckay-harlem-shadows/o-word-i-love-to-sing.html, id L01386.
Form and metre
O Word I Love to Sing is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.5 syllables. 6 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 17% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic hexameter.
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 ABAB tenderA · meB · tenderA · theeB
- 2 ABAB slenderA · glassB · slenderA · passB
- 3 ABAB slenderA · brineB · renderA · mineB
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O word I love to sing! thou art too tender | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| For all the passions agitating me; | 10 | ···/˘/˘·˘· |
| For all my bitterness thou art too tender, | 11 | ···/˘˘···/˘ |
| I cannot pour my red soul into thee. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| O haunting melody! thou art too slender, | 11 | ·/˘/˘˘···/˘ |
| Too fragile like a globe of crystal glass; | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| For all my stormy thoughts thou art too slender, | 11 | ···/˘····/˘ |
| The burden from my bosom will not pass. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| O tender word! O melody so slender! | 11 | ·/˘··/˘˘·/˘ |
| O tears of passion saturate with brine, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| O words, unwilling words, ye can not render | 11 | ··˘/˘····/˘ |
| My hatred for the foe of me and mine. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
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.