"Only in Sleep"
Only in sleep I see their faces,Children I played with when I was a child,Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten--What may have come to them, who can know?Yet we played last night as long ago,And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,I met their eyes and found them mild--Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,And for them am I too a child?
About this text
"Only in Sleep" 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, "Only in Sleep", in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/only-in-sleep.html, id L20792.
Form and metre
"Only in Sleep" is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%).
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 faces · childA · braided · wildA
- 2 -AA- forgotten · knowA · agoA · stair
- 3 -A-A faces · mildA · wonder · childA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Only in sleep I see their faces, | 9 | /˘·····/˘ |
| Children I played with when I was a child, | 10 | /˘········ |
| Louise comes back with her brown hair braided, | 10 | ˘/······/˘ |
| Annie with ringlets warm and wild. | 8 | /˘······ |
| Only in sleep Time is forgotten-- | 9 | /˘····˘/˘ |
| What may have come to them, who can know? | 9 | ········· |
| Yet we played last night as long ago, | 9 | ·······˘/ |
| And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair. | 11 | ··········· |
| The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces, | 11 | ····/˘···/˘ |
| I met their eyes and found them mild-- | 8 | ········ |
| Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| And for them am I too a child? | 8 | ········ |
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.