Gray Fog
A fog drifts in, the heavy ladenCold white ghost of the sea--One by one the hills go out,The road and the pepper-tree.
I watch the fog float in at the windowWith the whole world gone blind,Everything, even my longing, drowses,Even the thoughts in my mind.
I put my head on my hands before me,There is nothing left to be done or said,There is nothing to hope for, I am tired,And heavy as the dead.
Words in this poem
- ghost n.
- The spirit; the soul of man. [OE. gast, gost, soul, spirit, AS. gast breath, spirit, soul; akin to OS. g spirit, soul, D. geest, G. geist, and prob. to E. gaze, ghastly.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Gray Fog 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, Gray Fog, in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/gray-fog.html, id L16996.
Form and metre
Gray Fog is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 72%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 17% 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.
- 1 -A-A laden · seaA · out · treeA
- 2 -A-A window · blindA · drowses · mindA
- 3 -AAA me · saidA · tiredA · deadA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A fog drifts in, the heavy laden | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| Cold white ghost of the sea-- | 6 | ······ |
| One by one the hills go out, | 7 | ······· |
| The road and the pepper-tree. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| I watch the fog float in at the window | 10 | ········/˘ |
| With the whole world gone blind, | 6 | ······ |
| Everything, even my longing, drowses, | 9 | /˘·/·/˘·· |
| Even the thoughts in my mind. | 7 | /˘····· |
| I put my head on my hands before me, | 10 | ·········· |
| There is nothing left to be done or said, | 10 | ··/˘······ |
| There is nothing to hope for, I am tired, | 10 | ··/˘·····/ |
| And heavy as the dead. | 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.