The Look
Strephon kissed me in the spring,Robin in the fall,But Colin only looked at meAnd never kissed at all.
Strephon's kiss was lost in jest,Robin's lost in play,But the kiss in Colin's eyesHaunts me night and day.
Words in this poem
- colin n.
- The American quail or bobwhite. The name is also applied to other related species. See Bobwhite. [F. colin; prop. a dim. of Colas, contr. fr. Nicolas Nicholas.]
- jest n.
- A deed; an action; a gest. [OE. jeste, geste, deed, action, story, tale, OF. geste, LL. gesta, orig., exploits, neut. pl. from L. gestus, p. p. of gerere to bear, carry, accomplish, perfor]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Look 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, The Look, in Love Songs (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #442, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-love-songs/the-look.html, id L08034.
Form and metre
The Look is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.5 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
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 spring · fallA · me · allA
- 2 -A-A jest · playA · eyes · dayA
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Strephon kissed me in the spring, | 7 | ······· |
| Robin in the fall, | 5 | /˘··· |
| But Colin only looked at me | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And never kissed at all. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Strephon's kiss was lost in jest, | 7 | ······· |
| Robin's lost in play, | 5 | /˘··· |
| But the kiss in Colin's eyes | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Haunts me night and day. | 5 | ····· |
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.