Song
A silver rose to showIs your sweet face;And like the heavens’ white brow,Sometime God’s battle-place,Your blood is quiet now.
Your body is a starUnto my thought;But stars are not too far,And can be caught—Small pools their prisons are.
Words in this poem
- sometime adv.
- At a past time indefinitely referred to; once; formerly.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Song 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, Song, in Poems (1922), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66889, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rosenberg-poems/song.html, id L02515.
Form and metre
Song is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.5 syllables. 20% 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 -ABAB show · faceA · browB · placeA · nowB
- 2 ABABA starA · thoughtB · farA · caughtB · areA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A silver rose to show | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Is your sweet face; | 4 | ···· |
| And like the heavens’ white brow, | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Sometime God’s battle-place, | 6 | /··/˘· |
| Your blood is quiet now. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Your body is a star | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Unto my thought; | 4 | ···· |
| But stars are not too far, | 6 | ······ |
| And can be caught— | 4 | ···· |
| Small pools their prisons are. | 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.