Four Winds
"Four winds blowing through the sky,You have seen poor maidens die,Tell me then what I shall doThat my lover may be true."Said the wind from out the south,"Lay no kiss upon his mouth,"And the wind from out the west,"Wound the heart within his breast,"And the wind from out the east,"Send him empty from the feast,"And the wind from out the north,"In the tempest thrust him forth;When thou art more cruel than he,Then will Love be kind to thee."
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
Four Winds 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, Four Winds, in Love Songs (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #442, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-love-songs/four-winds.html, id L08045.
Form and metre
Four Winds is 14 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.1 syllables. 7% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in trochaic 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 AABBCCDDEEFFGG skyA · dieA · doB · trueB · southC · mouthC · westD · breastD · eastE · feastE · northF · forthF · heG · theeG
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| "Four winds blowing through the sky, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| You have seen poor maidens die, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Tell me then what I shall do | 7 | ······· |
| That my lover may be true." | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Said the wind from out the south, | 7 | ······· |
| "Lay no kiss upon his mouth," | 7 | ······· |
| And the wind from out the west, | 7 | ······· |
| "Wound the heart within his breast," | 7 | ······· |
| And the wind from out the east, | 7 | ······· |
| "Send him empty from the feast," | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| And the wind from out the north, | 7 | ······· |
| "In the tempest thrust him forth; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| When thou art more cruel than he, | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| Then will Love be kind to thee." | 7 | ······· |
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.