A Memory
I rememberThe crackle of the palm treesOver the mooned white roofs of the town...The shining town...And the tender fumbling of the surfOn the sulphur-yellow beachesAs we sat... a little apart... in the close-pressing night.
The moon hung above us like a golden mango,And the moist air clung to our faces,Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a childAnd we watched the out-flung seaRolling to the purple edge of the world,Yet ever back upon itself...As we...
Inadequate night...And mooned white memoryOf a tropic sea...How softly it comes upLike an ungathered lily.
Words in this poem
- mooned a.
- Of or resembling the moon; symbolized by the moon.
- clung a.
- Wasted away; shrunken. [Prop. p. p. fr. OE. clingen to wither. See Cling, v. i.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Memory is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Ghetto, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #4332; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Lola Ridge, A Memory, in The Ghetto, and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4332, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/ridge-ghetto/a-memory.html, id L20910.
Form and metre
A Memory is 19 lines in 3 stanzas.
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 -ABB-A- remember · treesA · townB · townB · surf · beachesA · night
- 2 ---A--A mango · faces · child · seaA · world · itself · weA
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I remember | 4 | ·˘/˘ |
| The crackle of the palm trees | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Over the mooned white roofs of the town... | 9 | ········· |
| The shining town... | 4 | ·/˘· |
| And the tender fumbling of the surf | 10 | ··/˘/˘˘··· |
| On the sulphur-yellow beaches | 8 | ··/˘/˘/˘ |
| As we sat... a little apart... in the close-pressing night. | 14 | ····/˘˘/···/˘· |
| The moon hung above us like a golden mango, | 12 | ········/˘/˘ |
| And the moist air clung to our faces, | 10 | ······/˘/˘ |
| Warm and fragrant as the open mouth of a child | 12 | ··/˘··/˘···· |
| And we watched the out-flung sea | 7 | ······· |
| Rolling to the purple edge of the world, | 10 | /˘··/˘···· |
| Yet ever back upon itself... | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| As we... | 2 | ·· |
| Inadequate night... | 5 | ˘/˘˘· |
| And mooned white memory | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| Of a tropic sea... | 5 | ··/˘· |
| How softly it comes up | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Like an ungathered lily. | 7 | ·····/˘ |
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.