Dirge
Boys and girls that held her dear,Do your weeping now;All you loved of her lies here.
Brought to earth the arrogant brow,And the withering tongueChastened; do your weeping now.
Sing whatever songs are sung,Wind whatever wreath,For a playmate perished young,
For a spirit spent in death.Boys and girls that held her dear,All you loved of her lies here.
Words in this poem
- withering a.
- Tending to wither; causing to shrink or fade.
- chastened a.
- Corrected; disciplined; refined; purified; toned down. Sir. W.
- playmate n.
- A companion in diversions; a playfellow.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Dirge is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #59167; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edna St. Vincent Millay, Dirge, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59167, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/millay-poems/dirge.html, id L24387.
Form and metre
Dirge is 12 lines in 4 stanzas of 3 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
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 dearA · now · hereA
- 2 A-A browA · tongue · nowA
- 3 A-A sungA · wreath · youngA
- 4 -AA death · dearA · hereA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Boys and girls that held her dear, | 7 | ······· |
| Do your weeping now; | 5 | ··/˘· |
| All you loved of her lies here. | 8 | ···˘···· |
| Brought to earth the arrogant brow, | 8 | ····/˘˘· |
| And the withering tongue | 6 | ··/˘˘· |
| Chastened; do your weeping now. | 8 | /˘˘··/˘· |
| Sing whatever songs are sung, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Wind whatever wreath, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| For a playmate perished young, | 8 | ··/·/˘˘· |
| For a spirit spent in death. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Boys and girls that held her dear, | 7 | ······· |
| All you loved of her lies here. | 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.