Joy
I am wild, I will sing to the trees,I will sing to the stars in the sky,I love, I am loved, he is mine,Now at last I can die!
I am sandaled with wind and with flame,I have heart-fire and singing to give,I can tread on the grass or the stars,Now at last I can live!
Words in this poem
- sandaled a.
- Wearing sandals.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Joy 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, Joy, in Love Songs (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #442, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-love-songs/joy.html, id L08086.
Form and metre
Joy is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is anapaestic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 97%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables.
See other poems in anapaestic 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 trees · skyA · mine · dieA
- 2 -A-A flame · giveA · stars · liveA
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I am wild, I will sing to the trees, | 9 | ········· |
| I will sing to the stars in the sky, | 9 | ········· |
| I love, I am loved, he is mine, | 8 | ········ |
| Now at last I can die! | 6 | ······ |
| I am sandaled with wind and with flame, | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| I have heart-fire and singing to give, | 9 | ···/·/˘·· |
| I can tread on the grass or the stars, | 9 | ········· |
| Now at last I can live! | 6 | ······ |
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.