A Question
What if you shut your eyes and look,Yea, look with all the spirit’s eyes,While mystic unrevealèd skiesUnfold like pages of a book
Wherein new scenes of wonder rareAre imaged, till the sense deceivesItself, and what it sees believes—Even what the soul has pictured there?
Words in this poem
- pictured a.
- Furnished with pictures; represented by a picture or pictures; as, a pictured scene.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Question is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems by Isaac Rosenberg, Project Gutenberg ebook #66889; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Isaac Rosenberg, A Question, in Poems (1922), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66889, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rosenberg-poems/a-question.html, id L02539.
Form and metre
A Question is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.9 syllables. 50% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 lookA · eyesB · skiesB · bookA
- 2 ABBA rareA · deceivesB · believesB · thereA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| What if you shut your eyes and look, | 8 | ········ |
| Yea, look with all the spirit’s eyes, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| While mystic unrevealèd skies | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| Unfold like pages of a book | 8 | ˘/·/˘··· |
| Wherein new scenes of wonder rare | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Are imaged, till the sense deceives | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Itself, and what it sees believes— | 8 | ˘/····˘/ |
| Even what the soul has pictured there? | 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.