Dreams
Men die...Dreams only change their houses.They cannot be lined up against a wallAnd quietly buried under ground,And no more heard of...However deep the pit and heaped the clay--Like seedlings of old timeHooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world--Dreams will to light.
About this text
Dreams 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, Dreams, in The Ghetto, and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4332, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/ridge-ghetto/dreams.html, id L20908.
Form and metre
Dreams is 9 lines in a single stanza.
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Men die... | 2 | ·· |
| Dreams only change their houses. | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| They cannot be lined up against a wall | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And quietly buried under ground, | 9 | ·/˘˘/˘··· |
| And no more heard of... | 5 | ····· |
| However deep the pit and heaped the clay-- | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Like seedlings of old time | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Hooding a sacred rose under the ice cap of the world-- | 14 | /˘·/˘········· |
| Dreams will to light. | 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.