Moonlight
It will not hurt me when I am old,A running tide where moonlight burnedWill not sting me like silver snakes;The years will make me sad and cold,It is the happy heart that breaks.
The heart asks more than life can give,When that is learned, then all is learned;The waves break fold on jewelled fold,But beauty itself is fugitive,It will not hurt me when I am old.
About this text
Moonlight 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, Moonlight, in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/moonlight.html, id L16994.
Form and metre
Moonlight is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.3 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 10% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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-BAB oldA · burned · snakesB · coldA · breaksB
- 2 A-BAB giveA · learned · foldB · fugitiveA · oldB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| It will not hurt me when I am old, | 9 | ········· |
| A running tide where moonlight burned | 8 | ·/˘··/·· |
| Will not sting me like silver snakes; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The years will make me sad and cold, | 8 | ········ |
| It is the happy heart that breaks. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The heart asks more than life can give, | 8 | ········ |
| When that is learned, then all is learned; | 8 | ········ |
| The waves break fold on jewelled fold, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| But beauty itself is fugitive, | 9 | ·/˘˘/·/˘˘ |
| It will not hurt me when I am old. | 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.