The One
No; for I swear now bare's the tree and loud the moaning of the wind,I walked no rut with eyelids shut, my ears and eyes were never blind,Only my eager thoughts I bent on many things that I desiredTo make my greedy heart content ere flesh and blood I left behind.
About this text
The One is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems - First Series, Project Gutenberg ebook #37860; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Collings Squire, The One, in Poems: First Series (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #37860, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/squire-poems/the-one-2.html, id L23162.
Form and metre
The One is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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-A windA · blindA · desired · behindA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| No; for I swear now bare's the tree and loud the moaning of the wind, | 16 | ···········/˘··· |
| I walked no rut with eyelids shut, my ears and eyes were never blind, | 15 | ·····/·······/· |
| Only my eager thoughts I bent on many things that I desired | 15 | /˘·/˘····/···˘/ |
| To make my greedy heart content ere flesh and blood I left behind. | 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.