Gubbinal
That strange flower, the sun,Is just what you say.Have it your way.
The world is ugly,And the people are sad.
That tuft of jungle feathers,That animal eye,Is just what you say.
That savage of fire,That seed,Have it your way.
The world is ugly,And the people are sad.
Words in this poem
- jungle n.
- A dense growth of brushwood, grasses, reeds, vines, etc.; an almost impenetrable thicket of trees, canes, and reedy vegetation, as in India, Africa, Australia, and Brazil. [Hind. jangal desert, forest, jungle; Skr. ja desert.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Gubbinal is in the public domain. This text is taken from Harmonium, Project Gutenberg ebook #78743; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Wallace Stevens, Gubbinal, in Harmonium (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #78743, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevens-harmonium/gubbinal.html, id L01068.
Form and metre
Gubbinal is 13 lines in 5 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.1 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 sun · sayA · wayA
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| That strange flower, the sun, | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| Is just what you say. | 5 | ····· |
| Have it your way. | 4 | ···· |
| The world is ugly, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| And the people are sad. | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| That tuft of jungle feathers, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| That animal eye, | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| Is just what you say. | 5 | ····· |
| That savage of fire, | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| That seed, | 2 | ·· |
| Have it your way. | 4 | ···· |
| The world is ugly, | 5 | ···/˘ |
| And the people are sad. | 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.