A Guard on the Staircase. Feodor at a Window
SECOND PERSON. Are you going to pity them? AccursedFamily!
THE PEOPLE. Make way, make way; the boyars come.(They enter the house.)ONE OF THE PEOPLE. What have they come for?
SECOND. Most like to make Feodor Godunov take the oath.
THIRD. Very like. Hark! What a noise in the house!What an uproar! They are fighting!
Why are ye silent? Cry, Long live the tsar DimitryIvanovich!
Words in this poem
- tsar n.
- The title of the emperor of Russia. See Czar.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Guard on the Staircase. Feodor at a Window is in the public domain. This text is taken from Boris Godunov: a drama in verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #5089; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Alexander Pushkin, A Guard on the Staircase. Feodor at a Window, in Boris Godunov (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #5089, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pushkin-boris-godunov/a-guard-on-the-staircase-feodor-at-a-window.html, id L25494.
Form and metre
A Guard on the Staircase. Feodor at a Window is 10 lines in 5 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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.
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| SECOND PERSON. Are you going to pity them? Accursed | 13 | /˘/˘··/·/˘··· |
| Family! | 3 | /˘˘ |
| THE PEOPLE. Make way, make way; the boyars come. | 11 | ·/˘·····˘/· |
| (They enter the house.) | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| ONE OF THE PEOPLE. What have they come for? | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| SECOND. Most like to make Feodor Godunov take the oath. | 13 | /˘····/˘/˘··· |
| THIRD. Very like. Hark! What a noise in the house! | 11 | ·/˘········ |
| What an uproar! They are fighting! | 8 | ··/···/˘ |
| Why are ye silent? Cry, Long live the tsar Dimitry | 13 | ···/˘········ |
| Ivanovich! | 4 | ···· |
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.