America!
And after...(Do you remember?)The drollery of the wind on our faces,And horizons reeling,And the terror of the plainHeaving like a gaunt pelvis to the sun...Under us--threshing and twangingTorn-up roots of the Song...
Words in this poem
- drollery n.
- The quality of being droll; sportive tricks; buffoonery; droll stories; comical gestures or manners. [F. drôlerie. See Droll.]
- gaunt a.
- Attenuated, as with fasting or suffering; lean; meager; pinched and grim. [Cf. Norw. gand a thin pointed stick, a tall and thin man, and W. gwan weak.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
America! 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, America!, in The Ghetto, and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4332, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/ridge-ghetto/america.html, id L20895.
Form and metre
America! is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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--AA after · remember · faces · reelingA · plain · sun · twangingA · songA
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| And after... | 3 | ··· |
| (Do you remember?) | 5 | ··˘/˘ |
| The drollery of the wind on our faces, | 12 | ·/˘˘····/˘/˘ |
| And horizons reeling, | 6 | ·˘/˘/˘ |
| And the terror of the plain | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Heaving like a gaunt pelvis to the sun... | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| Under us--threshing and twanging | 8 | ···/˘·/˘ |
| Torn-up roots of the Song... | 6 | ······ |
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.