Life, I Know Not What Thou Art
Life! I know not what thou art.But know that thou and I must part;And when, or how, or where we met,I own to me’s a secret yet.Life! we’ve been long togetherThrough pleasant and through cloudy weather;Tis hard to part when friends are dear--Perhaps ’twill cost a sigh, a tear;--Then steal away, give little warning,Choose thine own time;Say not Good Night,--but in some brighter climeBid me Good Morning.
Words in this poem
- twill v. i.
- To weave, as cloth, so as to produce the appearance of diagonal lines or ribs on the surface. [Scotch tweel; probably from LG. twillen to make double, from twi- two; akin to AS. twi-, E. twi- in twilight. See Twice, and cf. Tweed, Tweel.]
- clime n.
- A climate; a tract or region of the earth. See Climate. [L. clima. See Climate.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Life, I Know Not What Thou Art is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems Every Child Should Know The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library, Project Gutenberg ebook #16436; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Mary E. Burt, Life, I Know Not What Thou Art, in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/life-i-know-not-what-thou-art.html, id L25317.
Form and metre
Life, I Know Not What Thou Art is 12 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 93%).
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 AABBCCDDEFFE artA · partA · metB · yetB · togetherC · weatherC · dearD · tearD · warningE · timeF · climeF · morningE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Life! I know not what thou art. | 7 | ······· |
| But know that thou and I must part; | 8 | ········ |
| And when, or how, or where we met, | 8 | ········ |
| I own to me’s a secret yet. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Life! we’ve been long together | 7 | ····˘/˘ |
| Through pleasant and through cloudy weather; | 9 | ·/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Tis hard to part when friends are dear-- | 8 | ········ |
| Perhaps ’twill cost a sigh, a tear; | 8 | ˘/······ |
| --Then steal away, give little warning, | 9 | ··˘/·/˘/˘ |
| Choose thine own time; | 4 | ···· |
| Say not Good Night,--but in some brighter clime | 9 | ·······/· |
| Bid me Good Morning. | 5 | ···/˘ |
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.