The Treasure
When they see my songsThey will sigh and say,"Poor soul, wistful soul,Lonely night and day."
They will never knowAll your love for meSurer than the spring,Stronger than the sea;
Hidden out of sightLike a miser's goldIn forsaken fieldsWhere the wind is cold.
Words in this poem
- wistful a.
- Longing; wishful; desirous. [For wishful; perhaps influenced by wistly, which is probably corrupted from OE. wisly certainly (from Icel. viss certain, akin to E. wit). See Wish.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Treasure 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 Treasure, in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/the-treasure.html, id L17022.
Form and metre
The Treasure is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.0 syllables. 50% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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 songs · sayA · soul · dayA
- 2 -A-A know · meA · spring · seaA
- 3 -A-A sight · goldA · fields · coldA
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 trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| When they see my songs | 5 | ····· |
| They will sigh and say, | 5 | ····· |
| "Poor soul, wistful soul, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| Lonely night and day." | 5 | /˘··· |
| They will never know | 5 | ··/˘· |
| All your love for me | 5 | ····· |
| Surer than the spring, | 5 | /˘··· |
| Stronger than the sea; | 5 | /˘··· |
| Hidden out of sight | 5 | /˘··· |
| Like a miser's gold | 5 | ··/˘· |
| In forsaken fields | 5 | ·˘/˘· |
| Where the wind is cold. | 5 | ····· |
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.