The Wild Goat
O you would clothe me in silken frocksAnd house me from the cold,And bind with bright bands my glossy locks,And buy me chains of gold;
And give me--meekly to do my will--The hapless sons of men:--But the wild goat bounding on the barren hillDroops in the grassy pen.
Words in this poem
- hapless a.
- Without hap or luck; luckless; unfortunate; unlucky; unhappy; as, hapless youth; hapless maid.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Wild Goat 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, The Wild Goat, in Harlem Shadows (1922), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #64989, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/mckay-harlem-shadows/the-wild-goat.html, id L01350.
Form and metre
The Wild Goat is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.8 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
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 frocksA · coldB · locksA · goldB
- 2 ABAB willA · menB · hillA · penB
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| O you would clothe me in silken frocks | 9 | ······/˘· |
| And house me from the cold, | 6 | ······ |
| And bind with bright bands my glossy locks, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| And buy me chains of gold; | 6 | ······ |
| And give me--meekly to do my will-- | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| The hapless sons of men:-- | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| But the wild goat bounding on the barren hill | 11 | ····/˘··/˘· |
| Droops in the grassy pen. | 6 | ···/˘· |
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.