The Nun
So thy soul’s meekness shrinks,Too loth to show her face—Why should she shun the world?It is a holy place.
Concealèd to itselfIf the flower kept its scent,Of itself amorous,Less rich its ornament.
Use—utmost in each kind—Is beauty, truth in one,While soul rays light to soulIn one God-linkèd sun.
Words in this poem
- meekness n.
- The quality or state of being meek.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Nun 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, The Nun, in Poems (1922), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66889, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rosenberg-poems/the-nun.html, id L02525.
Form and metre
The Nun is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.8 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 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-A shrinks · faceA · world · placeA
- 2 -A-A itself · scentA · amorous · ornamentA
- 3 -A-A kind · oneA · soul · sunA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| So thy soul’s meekness shrinks, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Too loth to show her face— | 6 | ······ |
| Why should she shun the world? | 6 | ······ |
| It is a holy place. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Concealèd to itself | 5 | ···˘/ |
| If the flower kept its scent, | 6 | ··/··· |
| Of itself amorous, | 6 | ·˘//˘˘ |
| Less rich its ornament. | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| Use—utmost in each kind— | 6 | ·/···· |
| Is beauty, truth in one, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| While soul rays light to soul | 6 | ······ |
| In one God-linkèd sun. | 5 | ····· |
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.