"It Will Not Change"
It will not change nowAfter so many years;Life has not broken itWith parting or tears;Death will not alter it,It will live onIn all my songs for youWhen I am gone.
About this text
"It Will Not Change" 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, "It Will Not Change", in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/it-will-not-change.html, id L20813.
Form and metre
"It Will Not Change" is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is dactylic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
See other poems in dactylic dimeter.
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 -ABABC-C now · yearsA · itB · tearsA · itB · onC · you · goneC
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 dactylic dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| It will not change now | 5 | ····· |
| After so many years; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Life has not broken it | 6 | ···/˘· |
| With parting or tears; | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| Death will not alter it, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| It will live on | 4 | ···· |
| In all my songs for you | 6 | ······ |
| When I am gone. | 4 | ···· |
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.