The Silver Plough-Boy
A black figure dances in a black field.It seizes a sheet, from the ground, from a bush, as if spreadthere by some wash-woman for the night.It wraps the sheet around its body, until the black figureis silver.It dances down a furrow, in the early light, back of a crazyplough, the green blades following.How soon the silver fades in the dust! How soon the blackfigure slips from the wrinkled sheet! How softly thesheet falls to the ground!
About this text
The Silver Plough-Boy 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, The Silver Plough-Boy, in Harmonium (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #78743, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevens-harmonium/the-silver-plough-boy.html, id L01035.
Form and metre
The Silver Plough-Boy is 10 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.5 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, other poems in blank verse.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A black figure dances in a black field. | 10 | ··/˘/˘···· |
| It seizes a sheet, from the ground, from a bush, as if spread | 14 | ·/˘··········· |
| there by some wash-woman for the night. | 9 | ····/˘··· |
| It wraps the sheet around its body, until the black figure | 15 | ·······/˘····/˘ |
| is silver. | 3 | ·/˘ |
| It dances down a furrow, in the early light, back of a crazy | 17 | ·/˘··/˘··/˘····/˘ |
| plough, the green blades following. | 7 | ····/˘˘ |
| How soon the silver fades in the dust! How soon the black | 13 | ···/˘········ |
| figure slips from the wrinkled sheet! How softly the | 12 | /˘···/˘··/˘· |
| sheet falls to the ground! | 5 | ····· |
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.