Thrushes
Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim,Whose voices make the emptiness of lightA windy palace. Quavering from the brimOf dawn, and bold with song at edge of night,They clutch their leafy pinnacles and singScornful of man, and from his toils aloofWhose heart's a haunted woodland whispering;Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing;Who hears the cry of God in everything,And storms the gate of nothingness for proof.
Words in this poem
- haunted a.
- Inhabited by, or subject to the visits of, apparitions; frequented by a ghost.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Thrushes is in the public domain. This text is taken from Counter-Attack and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #8930; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Siegfried Sassoon, Thrushes, in Counter-Attack and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8930, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sassoon-counter-attack/thrushes.html, id L04714.
Form and metre
Thrushes is 10 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCDCCCD. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 40% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See 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 ABABCDCCCD skimA · lightB · brimA · nightB · singC · aloofD · whisperingC · wingC · everythingC · proofD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Tossed on the glittering air they soar and skim, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Whose voices make the emptiness of light | 10 | ·/˘··/˘˘·· |
| A windy palace. Quavering from the brim | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘··· |
| Of dawn, and bold with song at edge of night, | 10 | ·········· |
| They clutch their leafy pinnacles and sing | 10 | ···/˘/˘˘·· |
| Scornful of man, and from his toils aloof | 10 | /˘······˘/ |
| Whose heart's a haunted woodland whispering; | 10 | ···/˘/˘/˘˘ |
| Whose thoughts return on tempest-baffled wing; | 10 | ··˘/·/˘/˘· |
| Who hears the cry of God in everything, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And storms the gate of nothingness for proof. | 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.