The New Moon
Day, you have bruised and beaten me,As rain beats down the bright, proud sea,Beaten my body, bruised my soul,Left me nothing lovely or whole--Yet I have wrested a gift from you,Day that dies in dusky blue:
For suddenly over the factoriesI saw a moon in the cloudy seas--A wisp of beauty all aloneIn a world as hard and gray as stone--Oh who could be bitter and want to dieWhen a maiden moon wakes up in the sky?
Words in this poem
- wisp n.
- A small bundle, as of straw or other like substance. [OE. wisp, wips; probably akin to D. & G. wisch, Icel. visk, and perhaps to L. virga a twig, rod. Cf. Verge a rod, Whisk, n.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The New Moon 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, The New Moon, in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/the-new-moon.html, id L16976.
Form and metre
The New Moon is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABBCC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.6 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% 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 AABBCC meA · seaA · soulB · wholeB · youC · blueC
- 2 AABBCC factoriesA · seasA · aloneB · stoneB · dieC · skyC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Day, you have bruised and beaten me, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| As rain beats down the bright, proud sea, | 8 | ········ |
| Beaten my body, bruised my soul, | 8 | /˘·/˘··· |
| Left me nothing lovely or whole-- | 8 | ··/˘/˘·· |
| Yet I have wrested a gift from you, | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Day that dies in dusky blue: | 7 | ····/˘· |
| For suddenly over the factories | 9 | ·/˘˘··/˘˘ |
| I saw a moon in the cloudy seas-- | 9 | ······/˘· |
| A wisp of beauty all alone | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| In a world as hard and gray as stone-- | 9 | ········· |
| Oh who could be bitter and want to die | 10 | ····/˘···· |
| When a maiden moon wakes up in the sky? | 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.