First Fruit
I did not pluck at all,And I am sorry now:The garden is not barredBut the boughs are heavy with snow,The flake-blossoms thickly fallAnd the hid roots sigh, “How long will our flowers be marred?”
Strange as a bird were dumb,Strange as a hueless leaf.As one deaf hungers to hear,Or gazes without belief,The fruit yearned “Fingers, come!”O, shut hands, be empty another year.
Words in this poem
- hueless a.
- Destitute of color. Hudibras. [AS. hiwleás. See Hue color.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
First Fruit 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, First Fruit, in Poems (1922), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66889, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rosenberg-poems/first-fruit.html, id L02528.
Form and metre
First Fruit is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%). 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.2 syllables. 17% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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-B-AB allA · now · barredB · snow · fallA · marredB
- 2 ABCBAC dumbA · leafB · hearC · beliefB · comeA · yearC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I did not pluck at all, | 6 | ······ |
| And I am sorry now: | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The garden is not barred | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| But the boughs are heavy with snow, | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| The flake-blossoms thickly fall | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| And the hid roots sigh, “How long will our flowers be marred?” | 12 | ········//·· |
| Strange as a bird were dumb, | 6 | ······ |
| Strange as a hueless leaf. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| As one deaf hungers to hear, | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Or gazes without belief, | 7 | ·/˘··˘/ |
| The fruit yearned “Fingers, come!” | 6 | ···/˘· |
| O, shut hands, be empty another year. | 10 | ····/˘˘/˘· |
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.