The Crow
Thou dusky spirit of the wood,Bird of an ancient brood,Flitting thy lonely way,A meteor in the summer’s day,From wood to wood, from hill to hill,Low over forest, field, and rill,What wouldst thou say?Why shouldst thou haunt the day?What makes thy melancholy float?What bravery inspires thy throat,And bears thee up above the clouds,Over desponding human crowds,Which far belowLay thy haunts low?
Words in this poem
- flitting n.
- A flying with lightness and celerity; a fluttering.
- rill n.
- A very small brook; a streamlet. [Cf. LG. rille a small channel or brook, a furrow, a chamfer, OE. rigol a small brook, F. rigole a trench or furrow for water, W. rhill a row, rhigol a little di]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Crow 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, The Crow, in Poems of Nature (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59988, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/thoreau-poems/the-crow.html, id L02831.
Form and metre
The Crow is 14 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 86% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.7 syllables. 7% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 --AABBAACCDDEE wood · brood · wayA · dayA · hillB · rillB · sayA · dayA · floatC · throatC · cloudsD · crowdsD · belowE · lowE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Thou dusky spirit of the wood, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Bird of an ancient brood, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Flitting thy lonely way, | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| A meteor in the summer’s day, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| From wood to wood, from hill to hill, | 8 | ········ |
| Low over forest, field, and rill, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| What wouldst thou say? | 4 | ···· |
| Why shouldst thou haunt the day? | 6 | ······ |
| What makes thy melancholy float? | 8 | ···/˘·˘· |
| What bravery inspires thy throat, | 8 | ·/˘˘˘/·· |
| And bears thee up above the clouds, | 8 | ········ |
| Over desponding human crowds, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Which far below | 4 | ···· |
| Lay thy haunts low? | 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.