"Did You Never Know?"
Did you never know, long ago, how much you loved me--That your love would never lessen and never go?You were young then, proud and fresh-hearted,You were too young to know.
Fate is a wind, and red leaves fly before itFar apart, far away in the gusty time of year--Seldom we meet now, but when I hear you speaking,I know your secret, my dear, my dear.
Words in this poem
- gusty a.
- Subject to, or characterized by, gusts or squalls; windy; stormy; tempestuous.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
"Did You Never Know?" 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, "Did You Never Know?", in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/did-you-never-know.html, id L20815.
Form and metre
"Did You Never Know?" is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 73%).
See other poems in trochaic hexameter.
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 me · goA · hearted · knowA
- 2 -A-A it · yearA · speaking · dearA
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Did you never know, long ago, how much you loved me-- | 12 | ··/··˘/····· |
| That your love would never lessen and never go? | 10 | ····//˘·/· |
| You were young then, proud and fresh-hearted, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| You were too young to know. | 6 | ······ |
| Fate is a wind, and red leaves fly before it | 11 | ··········· |
| Far apart, far away in the gusty time of year-- | 13 | ·˘/·˘/··/˘··· |
| Seldom we meet now, but when I hear you speaking, | 12 | /˘········/˘ |
| I know your secret, my dear, my dear. | 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.