"I Thought of You"
I thought of you and how you love this beauty,And walking up the long beach all aloneI heard the waves breaking in measured thunderAs you and I once heard their monotone.
Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond meThe cold and sparkling silver of the sea--We two will pass through death and ages lengthenBefore you hear that sound again with me.
Words in this poem
- monotone n.
- A single unvaried tone or sound. [See Monotonous, Monotony.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
"I Thought of You" 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, "I Thought of You", in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/i-thought-of-you.html, id L20811.
Form and metre
"I Thought of You" is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
See other poems in iambic 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 beauty · aloneA · thunder · monotoneA
- 2 AA-A meA · seaA · lengthen · meA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I thought of you and how you love this beauty, | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| And walking up the long beach all alone | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| I heard the waves breaking in measured thunder | 11 | ····/˘·/˘/˘ |
| As you and I once heard their monotone. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Around me were the echoing dunes, beyond me | 11 | ·····/˘···· |
| The cold and sparkling silver of the sea-- | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| We two will pass through death and ages lengthen | 11 | ·······/˘/˘ |
| Before you hear that sound again with me. | 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.