Second Girl
I shall run before him,Arching cloths besprinkled with colorsAs small as fish-eggs.The threadsWill abash him.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- abash v.
- To destroy the self-possession of; to confuse or confound, as by exciting suddenly a consciousness of guilt, mistake, or inferiority; to put to shame; to disconcert; to discomfit. [OE. abaissen, abaisshen, abashen, OF.esbahir, F. ébahir, to astonish, fr. L. ex + the interjection bah, expressing astonishment. In OE. somewhat confused with a]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Second Girl 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, Second Girl, in Harmonium (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #78743, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevens-harmonium/second-girl.html, id L01008.
Form and metre
Second Girl is 5 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 5.2 syllables. 1 line ends 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 A---A himA · colors · eggs · threads · himA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I shall run before him, | 6 | ······ |
| Arching cloths besprinkled with colors | 9 | /˘···˘·/˘ |
| As small as fish-eggs. | 5 | ····· |
| The threads | 2 | ·· |
| Will abash him. | 4 | ·˘/· |
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.