Everyone Sang
Everyone suddenly burst out singing;And I was filled with such delightAs prisoned birds must find in freedomWinging wildly across the whiteOrchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight.
Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted,And beauty came like the setting sun.My heart was shaken with tears and horrorDrifted away ... O but every oneWas a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done.
Words in this poem
- everyone n.
- Everybody; -- commonly separated, every one. [OE. everychon.]
- wordless a.
- Not using words; not speaking; silent; speechless.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Everyone Sang is in the public domain. This text is taken from The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, Project Gutenberg ebook #45199; 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, Everyone Sang, in The War Poems (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #45199, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sassoon-war-poems/everyone-sang.html, id L17281.
Form and metre
Everyone Sang is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 65% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.4 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 50% 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 -A-AA singing · delightA · freedom · whiteA · sightA
- 2 -A-AA lifted · sunA · horror · oneA · doneA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Everyone suddenly burst out singing; | 10 | /˘·/˘˘··/˘ |
| And I was filled with such delight | 9 | ····˘··˘/ |
| As prisoned birds must find in freedom | 10 | ·/˘˘····/˘ |
| Winging wildly across the white | 8 | /˘/˘˘/·· |
| Orchards and dark green fields; on; on; and out of sight. | 12 | /˘·········· |
| Everyone's voice was suddenly lifted, | 10 | /˘···/˘˘/˘ |
| And beauty came like the setting sun. | 9 | ·/˘···/˘· |
| My heart was shaken with tears and horror | 10 | ···/˘···/˘ |
| Drifted away ... O but every one | 10 | /˘˘/··/˘˘· |
| Was a bird; and the song was wordless; the singing will never be done. | 16 | ·······/˘·/˘·/·· |
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.