Iron Wine
The ore in the crucible is pungent, smelling like acrid wine,It is dusky red, like the ebb of poppies,And purple, like the blood of elderberries.Surely it is a strong wine--juice distilled of the fierce iron.I am drunk of its fumes.I feel its fiery fluxDiffusing, permeating,Working some strange alchemy...So that I turn aside from the goodly board,So that I look askance upon the common cup,And from the mouths of cruciblesSuck forth the acrid sap.
Words in this poem
- goodly a.
- Pleasant; agreeable; desirable. [OE. godlich, AS. g. See Good, and Like.]
- askance adv.
- Sideways; obliquely; with a side glance; with disdain, envy, or suspicion. [Cf. D. schuin, schuins, sideways, schuiven to shove, schuinte slope. Cf. Asquint.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Iron Wine 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, Iron Wine, in The Ghetto, and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4332, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/ridge-ghetto/iron-wine.html, id L20915.
Form and metre
Iron Wine is 12 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.
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 ABBA-------- wineA · poppiesB · elderberriesB · ironA · fumes · flux · permeating · alchemy · board · cup · crucibles · sap
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The ore in the crucible is pungent, smelling like acrid wine, | 16 | ····/˘˘·/˘/˘·/˘· |
| It is dusky red, like the ebb of poppies, | 11 | ··/˘·····/˘ |
| And purple, like the blood of elderberries. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Surely it is a strong wine--juice distilled of the fierce iron. | 15 | /˘······˘/···/˘ |
| I am drunk of its fumes. | 6 | ······ |
| I feel its fiery flux | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| Diffusing, permeating, | 7 | ˘/˘/˘·˘ |
| Working some strange alchemy... | 7 | /˘··/˘˘ |
| So that I turn aside from the goodly board, | 11 | ····˘/··/˘· |
| So that I look askance upon the common cup, | 12 | ····˘/···/˘· |
| And from the mouths of crucibles | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| Suck forth the acrid sap. | 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.