Night
Wind is in the corn. Come along.Corn leaves swaying, rusty with talk,Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk,Wind is in the corn. Come along.
Wind is in the cane. Come along.Cane leaves swaying, rusty with talk,Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk,Wind is in the cane. Come along.
Words in this poem
- squawk v. i.
- To utter a shrill, abrupt scream; to squeak harshly. Squawking thrush (Zoöl.), the missel turush; -- so called from its note when alarmed. [See Squeak.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Night 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, Night, in Cane (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60093, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/toomer-cane/night.html, id L01563.
Form and metre
Night is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.5 syllables.
See other poems in trochaic 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 ABBA alongA · talkB · squawkB · alongA
- 2 ABBA alongA · talkB · squawkB · alongA
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Wind is in the corn. Come along. | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Corn leaves swaying, rusty with talk, | 8 | ··/˘/˘·· |
| Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk, | 10 | /˘/˘···/˘· |
| Wind is in the corn. Come along. | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Wind is in the cane. Come along. | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Cane leaves swaying, rusty with talk, | 8 | ··/˘/˘·· |
| Scratching choruses above the guinea’s squawk, | 10 | /˘/˘···/˘· |
| Wind is in the cane. Come along. | 8 | ······˘/ |
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.