The Poet’s Song
The rain had fallen, the Poet arose,He pass’d by the town and out of the street,A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,And waves of shadow went over the wheat,And he sat him down in a lonely place,And chanted a melody loud and sweet,That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud,And the lark drop down at his feet.
The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee,The snake slipt under a spray,The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak,And stared, with his foot on the prey,And the nightingale thought, “I have sung many songs,But never a one so gay,For he sings of what the world will beWhen the years have died away”.
Words in this poem
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Poet’s Song 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, The Poet’s Song, in The Early Poems (1830–1842), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8601, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/tennyson-early-poems/the-poet-s-song.html, id L16582.
Form and metre
The Poet’s Song is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.9 syllables. 6% 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-A-A arose · streetA · sun · wheatA · place · sweetA · cloud · feetA
- 2 AB-B-BAB beeA · sprayB · beak · preyB · songs · gayB · beA · awayB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The rain had fallen, the Poet arose, | 10 | ···/˘·/˘˘/ |
| He pass’d by the town and out of the street, | 10 | ·········· |
| A light wind blew from the gates of the sun, | 10 | ·········· |
| And waves of shadow went over the wheat, | 9 | ···/····· |
| And he sat him down in a lonely place, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And chanted a melody loud and sweet, | 9 | ·/˘·/˘··· |
| That made the wild-swan pause in her cloud, | 9 | ········· |
| And the lark drop down at his feet. | 8 | ········ |
| The swallow stopt as he hunted the bee, | 10 | ·/˘···/˘·· |
| The snake slipt under a spray, | 7 | ······· |
| The wild hawk stood with the down on his beak, | 10 | ·········· |
| And stared, with his foot on the prey, | 8 | ········ |
| And the nightingale thought, “I have sung many songs, | 10 | ··/˘····/· |
| But never a one so gay, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| For he sings of what the world will be | 9 | ········· |
| When the years have died away”. | 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.