Tess
The free fair life that has never been mine, the glory that might havebeen,If I were what you seem to be and what I may not be!I know I walk upon the earth, but a dreadful wall betweenMy spirit and your spirit lies, your joy and my misery.
The angels that lie watching us, the little human play,What deem they of the laughter and the tears that flow apart?When a word of man is a woman’s doom do they turn and wonder and say,“Ah! Why has God made love so great that love must burst her heart?”
Words in this poem
- dreadful a.
- Full of dread or terror; fearful.
- deem v. t.
- To decide; to judge; to sentence; to condemn. [OE. demen to judge, condemn, AS. d, fr. d doom; akin to OFries. d, OS. ad, D. doemen, OHG. tuommen, Icel. dæma, Sw. dömma, Dan. dömme, Goth. d. See Doom, n., an]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Tess 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, Tess, in Poems (1922), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66889, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rosenberg-poems/tess.html, id L02524.
Form and metre
Tess is 9 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 73%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 13.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 22% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic heptameter.
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.
- 2 ABAB playA · apartB · sayA · heartB
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 heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The free fair life that has never been mine, the glory that might have | 15 | ······/···/˘··· |
| been, | 1 | · |
| If I were what you seem to be and what I may not be! | 14 | ·············· |
| I know I walk upon the earth, but a dreadful wall between | 15 | ··········/˘··· |
| My spirit and your spirit lies, your joy and my misery. | 12 | ·/··/·····/˘ |
| The angels that lie watching us, the little human play, | 14 | ·/˘··/˘··/˘/˘· |
| What deem they of the laughter and the tears that flow apart? | 14 | ·····/˘·····˘/ |
| When a word of man is a woman’s doom do they turn and wonder and say, | 18 | ·······/˘·····/˘·· |
| “Ah! Why has God made love so great that love must burst her heart?” | 14 | ·············· |
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.