At the Sea-Side
When I was down beside the seaA wooden spade they gave to meTo dig the sandy shore.
My holes were empty like a cup.In every hole the sea came up,Till it could come no more.
About this text
At the Sea-Side is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Child's Garden of Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #136; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Louis Stevenson, At the Sea-Side, in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #136, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevenson-childs-garden/at-the-sea-side.html, id L07175.
Form and metre
At the Sea-Side is 6 lines in 2 stanzas of 3 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 97%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.3 syllables.
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- seaA · meA · shore
- 2 AA- cupA · upA · more
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When I was down beside the sea | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| A wooden spade they gave to me | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| To dig the sandy shore. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| My holes were empty like a cup. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| In every hole the sea came up, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Till it could come no more. | 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.