But Not to Me
The April night is still and sweetWith flowers on every tree;Peace comes to them on quiet feet,But not to me.
My peace is hidden in his breastWhere I shall never be;Love comes to-night to all the rest,But not to me.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
But Not to Me is in the public domain. This text is taken from Love Songs, Project Gutenberg ebook #442; 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, But Not to Me, in Love Songs (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #442, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-love-songs/but-not-to-me.html, id L08038.
Form and metre
But Not to Me is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.8 syllables. 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 ABAB sweetA · treeB · feetA · meB
- 2 ABAB breastA · beB · restA · meB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The April night is still and sweet | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| With flowers on every tree; | 8 | ·/˘·/˘˘· |
| Peace comes to them on quiet feet, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| But not to me. | 4 | ···· |
| My peace is hidden in his breast | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Where I shall never be; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Love comes to-night to all the rest, | 8 | ········ |
| But not to me. | 4 | ···· |
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.