The Unexplorer
There was a road ran past our houseToo lovely to explore.I asked my mother once--she saidThat if you followed where it ledIt brought you to the milk-man’s door.(That’s why I have not travelled more.)
Words in this poem
- explore v. t.
- To seek for or after; to strive to attain by search; to look wisely and carefully for. [L. explorare to explore; ex out+plorare to cry out aloud,prob. orig., to cause to flow; perh. akin to E. flow: cf. F. explorer.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Unexplorer 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, The Unexplorer, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59167, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/millay-poems/the-unexplorer.html, id L24351.
Form and metre
The Unexplorer is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
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 -ABBAA house · exploreA · saidB · ledB · doorA · moreA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| There was a road ran past our house | 8 | ······/· |
| Too lovely to explore. | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| I asked my mother once--she said | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| That if you followed where it led | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| It brought you to the milk-man’s door. | 8 | ········ |
| (That’s why I have not travelled more.) | 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.