Fragment: 'The Rude Wind Is Singing'
The rude wind is singingThe dirge of the music dead;The cold worms are clingingWhere kisses were lately fed.
Words in this poem
- dirge n.
- A piece of music of a mournful character, to accompany funeral rites; a funeral hymn. [Contraction of Lat. dirige, direct thou (imperative of dirigere), the first word of a funeral hymn (Lat. transl. of Psalm v. 8) beginning, "Dirige, Domine, in c]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Fragment: 'The Rude Wind Is Singing' is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #4798; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Fragment: 'The Rude Wind Is Singing', in The Complete Poetical Works, Volume II (1816–1819), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4798, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/shelley-later-poems/fragment-the-rude-wind-is-singing.html, id L16470.
Form and metre
Fragment: 'The Rude Wind Is Singing' is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. The lines average 6.5 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 ABAB singingA · deadB · clingingA · fedB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The rude wind is singing | 6 | ····/˘ |
| The dirge of the music dead; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| The cold worms are clinging | 6 | ····/˘ |
| Where kisses were lately fed. | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
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.