Third Girl
Oh, la ... le pauvre!I shall run before him,With a curious puffing.He will bend his ear then.I shall whisperHeavenly labials in a world of gutturals.It will undo 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,]
- curious a.
- Difficult to please or satisfy; solicitous to be correct; careful; scrupulous; nice; exact. [OF. curios, curius, F. curieux, L. curiosus careful, inquisitive, fr. cura care. See Cure.]
- puffing
- a. & n. from Puff, v. i. & t. Puffing adder. (Zoöl.) Same as Puff adder (b), under Puff.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Third 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, Third Girl, in Harmonium (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #78743, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevens-harmonium/third-girl.html, id L01009.
Form and metre
Third Girl is 7 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 91% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.1 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in trochaic 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 -A----A pauvre · himA · puffing · then · whisper · gutturals · 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. Read against trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Oh, la ... le pauvre! | 4 | ···· |
| I shall run before him, | 6 | ······ |
| With a curious puffing. | 7 | ··/˘˘/˘ |
| He will bend his ear then. | 6 | ······ |
| I shall whisper | 4 | ··/˘ |
| Heavenly labials in a world of gutturals. | 11 | /˘······/˘˘ |
| It will undo him. | 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.