"A Little While"
A little while when I am goneMy life will live in music after me,As spun foam lifted and borne onAfter the wave is lost in the full sea.
A while these nights and days will burnIn song with the bright frailty of foam,Living in light before they turnBack to the nothingness that is their home.
Words in this poem
- frailty n.
- The condition quality of being frail, physically, mentally, or morally, frailness; infirmity; weakness of resolution; liableness to be deceived or seduced. [OE. frelete, freilte, OF. fraileté, fr. L. fragilitas. See Frail, a., and cf. Fragility.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
"A Little While" is in the public domain. This text is taken from Flame and Shadow, Project Gutenberg ebook #591; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sara Teasdale, "A Little While", in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/a-little-while.html, id L20805.
Form and metre
"A Little While" is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%).
See 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 ABAB goneA · meB · onA · seaB
- 2 ABAB burnA · foamB · turnA · homeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A little while when I am gone | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| My life will live in music after me, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| As spun foam lifted and borne on | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| After the wave is lost in the full sea. | 10 | ·········· |
| A while these nights and days will burn | 8 | ········ |
| In song with the bright frailty of foam, | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| Living in light before they turn | 8 | /˘······ |
| Back to the nothingness that is their home. | 9 | ···/˘···· |
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.