Smoke
Light-Winged Smoke, Icarian bird,Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight;Lark without song, and messenger of dawn,Circling above the hamlets as thy nest;Or else, departing dream, and shadowy formOf midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts;By night star-veiling, and by dayDarkening the light and blotting out the sun;Go thou, my incense, upward from this hearth,And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame.
Words in this poem
- icarian a.
- Soaring too high for safety, like Icarus; adventurous in flight.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Smoke is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of Nature, Project Gutenberg ebook #59988; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry David Thoreau, Smoke, in Poems of Nature (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59988, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/thoreau-poems/smoke.html, id L02818.
Form and metre
Smoke is 10 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%). 84% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.5 syllables. 20% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic pentameter, other poems in blank verse.
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.
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Light-Winged Smoke, Icarian bird, | 8 | ···˘/˘˘· |
| Melting thy pinions in thy upward flight; | 10 | /˘·/˘··/˘· |
| Lark without song, and messenger of dawn, | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| Circling above the hamlets as thy nest; | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| Or else, departing dream, and shadowy form | 10 | ··˘/˘··/˘· |
| Of midnight vision, gathering up thy skirts; | 10 | ·/·/˘/˘··· |
| By night star-veiling, and by day | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Darkening the light and blotting out the sun; | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| Go thou, my incense, upward from this hearth, | 10 | ···/·/˘··· |
| And ask the gods to pardon this clear flame. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
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.