Inscription for Marye’s Heights, Fredericksburg
To them who crossed the floodAnd climbed the hill, with eyesUpon the heavenly flag intent,And through the deathful tumult wentEven unto death: to them this Stone--Erect, where they were overthrown--Of more than victory the monument.
Words in this poem
- deathful a.
- Full of death or slaughter; murderous; destructive; bloody.
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Inscription for Marye’s Heights, Fredericksburg is in the public domain. This text is taken from Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War, Project Gutenberg ebook #12384; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Herman Melville, Inscription for Marye’s Heights, Fredericksburg, in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12384, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/melville-battle-pieces/inscription-for-marye-s-heights-fredericksburg.html, id L00925.
Form and metre
Inscription for Marye’s Heights, Fredericksburg is 7 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 57% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.9 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic 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 --AABBA flood · eyes · intentA · wentA · stoneB · overthrownB · monumentA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| To them who crossed the flood | 7 | ····˘·· |
| And climbed the hill, with eyes | 7 | ··˘···· |
| Upon the heavenly flag intent, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| And through the deathful tumult went | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Even unto death: to them this Stone-- | 8 | /······· |
| Erect, where they were overthrown-- | 8 | ˘/····˘/ |
| Of more than victory the monument. | 9 | ···/˘·/˘˘ |
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.