At Sea
In the pull of the wind I stand, lonely,On the deck of a ship, rising, falling,Wild night around me, wild water under me,Whipped by the storm, screaming and calling.
Earth is hostile and the sea hostile,Why do I look for a place to rest?I must fight always and die fightingWith fear an unhealing wound in my breast.
Words in this poem
- screaming a.
- Uttering screams; shrieking.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
At Sea 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, At Sea, in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/at-sea.html, id L17015.
Form and metre
At Sea is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 71%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.6 syllables. 5 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic pentameter.
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.
- 2 -A-A hostile · restA · fighting · breastA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| In the pull of the wind I stand, lonely, | 10 | ········/˘ |
| On the deck of a ship, rising, falling, | 10 | ······/˘/˘ |
| Wild night around me, wild water under me, | 11 | ······/˘··· |
| Whipped by the storm, screaming and calling. | 9 | ····/˘·/˘ |
| Earth is hostile and the sea hostile, | 9 | ··˘/···/˘ |
| Why do I look for a place to rest? | 9 | ········· |
| I must fight always and die fighting | 9 | ···/···/˘ |
| With fear an unhealing wound in my breast. | 10 | ·········· |
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.