Foreword
A feast of moon and men and barking hounds,An orgy for some genius of the SouthWith bloodshot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouthSurprised in making folk-songs....
Words in this poem
- orgy n.
- A frantic revel; drunken revelry. See Orgies
- bloodshot a.
- Red and inflamed; suffused with blood, or having the vessels turgid with blood, as when the conjunctiva is inflamed or irritated. [Blood + shot, p. p. of shoot to variegate.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Foreword 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, Foreword, in Cane (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60093, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/toomer-cane/foreword.html, id L01556.
Form and metre
Foreword is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. The lines average 9.2 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 -AA- hounds · southA · mouthA · songs
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A feast of moon and men and barking hounds, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| An orgy for some genius of the South | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| With bloodshot eyes and cane-lipped scented mouth | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Surprised in making folk-songs.... | 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.