Song (“Who can say”)
Who can sayWhy To-dayTo-morrow will be yesterday?Who can tellWhy to smellThe violet, recalls the dewy primeOf youth and buried time?The cause is nowhere found in rhyme.
Words in this poem
- nowhere adv.
- Not anywhere; not in any place or state; as, the book is nowhere to be found. [AS. nahwær. See No, and Where.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Song (“Who can say”) is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson, Project Gutenberg ebook #8601; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Alfred Tennyson, Song (“Who can say”), in The Early Poems (1830–1842), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8601, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tennyson-early-poems/song-who-can-say.html, id L20779.
Form and metre
Song (“Who can say”) is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 75% of the lines. The metre is iambic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in iambic dimeter.
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 AAABBCCC sayA · dayA · yesterdayA · tellB · smellB · primeC · timeC · rhymeC
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 dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Who can say | 3 | ··· |
| Why To-day | 3 | ··· |
| To-morrow will be yesterday? | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Who can tell | 3 | ··· |
| Why to smell | 3 | ··· |
| The violet, recalls the dewy prime | 9 | ·/˘˘/·/˘· |
| Of youth and buried time? | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The cause is nowhere found in rhyme. | 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.