The Portent
Hanging from the beam,Slowly swaying (such the law),Gaunt the shadow on your green,Shenandoah!The cut is on the crown(Lo, John Brown),And the stabs shall heal no more.
Hidden in the capIs the anguish none can draw;So your future veils its face,Shenandoah!But the streaming beard is shown(Weird John Brown),The meteor of the the war.
Words in this poem
- gaunt a.
- Attenuated, as with fasting or suffering; lean; meager; pinched and grim. [Cf. Norw. gand a thin pointed stick, a tall and thin man, and W. gwan weak.]
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- streaming a.
- Sending forth streams.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Portent 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, The Portent, in Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War (1866), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12384, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/melville-battle-pieces/the-portent.html, id L19085.
Form and metre
The Portent is 14 lines in 2 stanzas of 7 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See 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 ----AA- beam · law · green · shenandoah · crownA · brownA · more
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hanging from the beam, | 5 | /˘··· |
| Slowly swaying (such the law), | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| Gaunt the shadow on your green, | 7 | ··/···· |
| Shenandoah! | 4 | ·˘/˘ |
| The cut is on the crown | 6 | ······ |
| (Lo, John Brown), | 3 | ··· |
| And the stabs shall heal no more. | 7 | ······· |
| Hidden in the cap | 5 | /˘··· |
| Is the anguish none can draw; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| So your future veils its face, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Shenandoah! | 4 | ·˘/˘ |
| But the streaming beard is shown | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| (Weird John Brown), | 3 | ··· |
| The meteor of the the war. | 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.