Tides
Love in my heart was a fresh tide flowingWhere the starlike sea gulls soar;The sun was keen and the foam was blowingHigh on the rocky shore.
But now in the dusk the tide is turning,Lower the sea gulls soar,And the waves that rose in resistless yearningAre broken forevermore.
Words in this poem
- resistless a.
- Having no power to resist; making no opposition.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Tides 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, Tides, in Love Songs (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #442, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-love-songs/tides.html, id L08055.
Form and metre
Tides is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.2 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 38% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic pentameter.
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 flowingA · soarB · blowingA · shoreB
- 2 ABAB turningA · soarB · yearningA · forevermoreB
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 trochaic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Love in my heart was a fresh tide flowing | 9 | ········/ |
| Where the starlike sea gulls soar; | 7 | ··/···· |
| The sun was keen and the foam was blowing | 10 | ········/˘ |
| High on the rocky shore. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| But now in the dusk the tide is turning, | 10 | ········/˘ |
| Lower the sea gulls soar, | 6 | /˘···· |
| And the waves that rose in resistless yearning | 11 | ······˘/˘/˘ |
| Are broken forevermore. | 7 | ·/˘···· |
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.