The Wind
A wind is blowing over my soul,I hear it cry the whole night through--Is there no peace for me on earthExcept with you?
Alas, the wind has made me wise,Over my naked soul it blew,--There is no peace for me on earthEven with you.
About this text
The Wind 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 Wind, in Love Songs (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #442, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-love-songs/the-wind.html, id L08094.
Form and metre
The Wind is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See 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 -A-A soul · throughA · earth · youA
- 2 -A-A wise · blewA · earth · youA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A wind is blowing over my soul, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| I hear it cry the whole night through-- | 8 | ········ |
| Is there no peace for me on earth | 8 | ········ |
| Except with you? | 4 | ···· |
| Alas, the wind has made me wise, | 8 | ˘/······ |
| Over my naked soul it blew,-- | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| There is no peace for me on earth | 8 | ········ |
| Even with you. | 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.