The Foundling
Snow wraiths circle usLike washers of the dead,Flapping their white wet clothsImpatientlyAbout the grizzled head,Where the coarse hair mats like grass,And the efficient windWith cold professional basteProbes like a lancetThrough the cotton shirt...
About us are white cliffs and space.No façades show,Nor roof nor any spire...All sheathed in snow...The parasitic snowThat clings about them like a blight.
Only detached lightsFloat hazily like greenish moons,And endlesslyDown the whore-street,Accouched and comforted and sleeping warm,The blizzard waltzes with the night.
Words in this poem
- impatiently adv.
- In an impatient manner.
- baste v. t.
- To beat with a stick; to cudgel. [Cf. Icel. beysta to strike, powder; Sw. basa to beat with a rod: perh. akin to E. beat.]
- lancet n.
- A surgical instrument of various forms, commonly sharp-pointed and two-edged, used in venesection, and in opening abscesses, etc. [F. lancette, dim. of lance lance. See Lance.]
- hazily adv.
- In a hazy manner; mistily; obscurely; confusedly.
- endlessly adv.
- In an endless manner.
- blizzard n.
- A gale of piercingly cold wind, usually accompanied with fine and blinding snow; a furious blast. [U. S.] [Cf. Blaze to flash. Formerly, in local use, a rattling volley; cf. "to blaze away" to fire away.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Foundling 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, The Foundling, in The Ghetto, and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4332, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/ridge-ghetto/the-foundling.html, id L20903.
Form and metre
The Foundling is 22 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
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--A---BB us · deadA · cloths · impatiently · headA · grass · wind · baste · lancetB · shirtB
- 2 -A-AA- space · showA · spire · snowA · snowA · blight
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Snow wraiths circle us | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Like washers of the dead, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Flapping their white wet cloths | 6 | /˘···· |
| Impatiently | 4 | ˘/˘˘ |
| About the grizzled head, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Where the coarse hair mats like grass, | 7 | ······· |
| And the efficient wind | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| With cold professional baste | 7 | ··˘/˘˘· |
| Probes like a lancet | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Through the cotton shirt... | 5 | ··/˘· |
| About us are white cliffs and space. | 8 | ········ |
| No façades show, | 4 | ···· |
| Nor roof nor any spire... | 6 | ···/˘· |
| All sheathed in snow... | 4 | ···· |
| The parasitic snow | 6 | ··˘/˘· |
| That clings about them like a blight. | 8 | ········ |
| Only detached lights | 5 | /˘˘/· |
| Float hazily like greenish moons, | 8 | ·/˘˘·/˘· |
| And endlessly | 4 | ·/˘˘ |
| Down the whore-street, | 4 | ···· |
| Accouched and comforted and sleeping warm, | 10 | ···/˘˘·/˘· |
| The blizzard waltzes with the night. | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
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.