Message
I heard a cry in the night,A thousand miles it came,Sharp as a flash of light,My name, my name!
It was your voice I heard,You waked and loved me so--I send you back this word,I know, I know!
About this text
Message 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, Message, in Love Songs (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #442, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-love-songs/message.html, id L08098.
Form and metre
Message is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.9 syllables.
See other poems in iambic 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 ABAB nightA · cameB · lightA · nameB
- 2 ABAB heardA · soB · wordA · knowB
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I heard a cry in the night, | 7 | ······· |
| A thousand miles it came, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Sharp as a flash of light, | 6 | ······ |
| My name, my name! | 4 | ···· |
| It was your voice I heard, | 6 | ······ |
| You waked and loved me so-- | 6 | ······ |
| I send you back this word, | 6 | ······ |
| I know, I know! | 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.