"What Do I Care?"
What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring,That my songs do not show me at all?For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire,I am an answer, they are only a call.
But what do I care, for love will be over so soon,Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by,For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent,It is my heart that makes my songs, not I.
About this text
"What Do I Care?" 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, "What Do I Care?", in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/what-do-i-care.html, id L20788.
Form and metre
"What Do I Care?" is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is anapaestic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%).
See other poems in anapaestic 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-A spring · allA · fire · callA
- 2 -A-A soon · byA · silent · iA
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 anapaestic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| What do I care, in the dreams and the languor of spring, | 13 | ·········/˘·· |
| That my songs do not show me at all? | 9 | ········· |
| For they are a fragrance, and I am a flint and a fire, | 14 | ····/˘·······/ |
| I am an answer, they are only a call. | 11 | ···/˘··/˘·· |
| But what do I care, for love will be over so soon, | 12 | ············ |
| Let my heart have its say and my mind stand idly by, | 13 | ··········/˘· |
| For my mind is proud and strong enough to be silent, | 13 | ·······˘/··/˘ |
| It is my heart that makes my songs, not I. | 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.