Cape Cod
The low sandy beach and the thin scrub pine,The wide reach of bay and the long sky line,--O, I am far from home!
The salt, salt smell of the thick sea air,And the smooth round stones that the ebbtides wear,--When will the good ship come?
The wretched stumps all charred and burned,And the deep soft rut where the cartwheel turned,--Why is the world so old?
The lapping wave, and the broad gray skyWhere the cawing crows and the slow gulls fly,--Where are the dead untold?
The thin, slant willows by the flooded bog,The huge stranded hulk and the floating log,--Sorrow with life began!
And among the dark pines, and along the flat shore,O the wind, and the wind, for evermore!What will become of man?
Words in this poem
- untold a.
- Not told; not related; not revealed; as, untold secrets.
- hulk n.
- The body of a ship or decked vessel of any kind; esp., the body of an old vessel laid by as unfit for service. [OE. hulke a heavy ship, AS. hulc a light, swift ship; akin to D. hulk a ship of burden, G. holk, OHG. holcho; perh. fr. LL. holcas, Gr. Wolf, Holcad.]
- evermore adv.
- During eternity; always; forever; for an indefinite period; at all times; -- often used substantively with for.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Cape Cod is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #49721; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: George Santayana, Cape Cod, in Poems (1922), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #49721, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/santayana-poems/cape-cod.html, id L21739.
Form and metre
Cape Cod is 18 lines in 6 stanzas of 3 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 56% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 76%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 AA- pineA · lineA · home
- 2 BB- airB · wearB · come
- 3 CCD burnedC · turnedC · oldD
- 4 EED skyE · flyE · untoldD
- 5 --F bog · log · beganF
- 6 GGF shoreG · evermoreG · manF
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The low sandy beach and the thin scrub pine, | 10 | ··/˘······ |
| The wide reach of bay and the long sky line,-- | 10 | ·········· |
| O, I am far from home! | 6 | ······ |
| The salt, salt smell of the thick sea air, | 9 | ········· |
| And the smooth round stones that the ebbtides wear,-- | 10 | ·········· |
| When will the good ship come? | 6 | ······ |
| The wretched stumps all charred and burned, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| And the deep soft rut where the cartwheel turned,-- | 10 | ·······/·· |
| Why is the world so old? | 6 | ······ |
| The lapping wave, and the broad gray sky | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| Where the cawing crows and the slow gulls fly,-- | 10 | ·········· |
| Where are the dead untold? | 6 | ····˘/ |
| The thin, slant willows by the flooded bog, | 10 | ···/···/˘· |
| The huge stranded hulk and the floating log,-- | 10 | ··/˘···/˘· |
| Sorrow with life began! | 6 | /˘··˘/ |
| And among the dark pines, and along the flat shore, | 12 | ·······˘/··· |
| O the wind, and the wind, for evermore! | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| What will become of man? | 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.