Faults
They came to tell your faults to me,They named them over one by one;I laughed aloud when they were done,I knew them all so well before,--Oh, they were blind, too blind to seeYour faults had made me love you more.
Words in this poem
- aloud adv.
- With a loud voice, or great noise; loudly; audibly. [Pref. a- + loud.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Faults 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, Faults, in Love Songs (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #442, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-love-songs/faults.html, id L08047.
Form and metre
Faults is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBCAC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, 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 8.0 syllables.
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 ABBCAC meA · oneB · doneB · beforeC · seeA · moreC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| They came to tell your faults to me, | 8 | ········ |
| They named them over one by one; | 8 | ········ |
| I laughed aloud when they were done, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| I knew them all so well before,-- | 8 | ········ |
| Oh, they were blind, too blind to see | 8 | ········ |
| Your faults had made me love you more. | 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.