Spirit's House
From naked stones of agonyI will build a house for me;As a mason all aloneI will raise it, stone by stone,And every stone where I have bledWill show a sign of dusky red.I have not gone the way in vain,For I have good of all my pain;My spirit's quiet house will beBuilt of naked stones I trodOn roads where I lost sight of God.
About this text
Spirit's House 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, Spirit's House, in Love Songs (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #442, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-love-songs/spirit-s-house.html, id L08066.
Form and metre
Spirit's House is 11 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 55% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.7 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 46% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 -ABBCCDDAEE agony · meA · aloneB · stoneB · bledC · redC · vainD · painD · beA · trodE · godE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| From naked stones of agony | 8 | ·/˘··/˘˘ |
| I will build a house for me; | 7 | ······· |
| As a mason all alone | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| I will raise it, stone by stone, | 7 | ······· |
| And every stone where I have bled | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Will show a sign of dusky red. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| I have not gone the way in vain, | 8 | ········ |
| For I have good of all my pain; | 8 | ········ |
| My spirit's quiet house will be | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Built of naked stones I trod | 8 | ··/˘˘··· |
| On roads where I lost sight of God. | 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.