Face
Hair—silver-gray,like streams of stars,Brows—recurved canoesquivered by the ripples blown by pain,Her eyes—mist of tearscondensing on the flesh belowAnd her channeled musclesare cluster grapes of sorrowpurple in the evening sunnearly ripe for worms.
Words in this poem
- quivered a.
- Furnished with, or carrying, a quiver.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Face is in the public domain. This text is taken from Cane, Project Gutenberg ebook #60093; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Jean Toomer, Face, in Cane (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60093, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/toomer-cane/face.html, id L01560.
Form and metre
Face is 13 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 4.7 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 46% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Hair— | 1 | · |
| silver-gray, | 3 | /˘· |
| like streams of stars, | 4 | ···· |
| Brows— | 1 | · |
| recurved canoes | 4 | ˘/˘/ |
| quivered by the ripples blown by pain, | 10 | /˘˘··/˘··· |
| Her eyes— | 2 | ·· |
| mist of tears | 3 | ··· |
| condensing on the flesh below | 8 | ˘/˘····· |
| And her channeled muscles | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| are cluster grapes of sorrow | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| purple in the evening sun | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| nearly ripe for worms. | 5 | /˘··· |
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.