To be as this old elm full loth were I,
To be as this old elm full loth were I,That shakes in the autumn storm its palsied head.Hewn by the weird last woodman let me lieEre the path rustle with my foliage shed.
Words in this poem
- palsied a.
- Affected with palsy; paralyzed.
- woodman n.
- A forest officer appointed to take care of the king's woods; a forester. [Eng.]
- rustle v. i.
- To make a quick succession of small sounds, like the rubbing or moving of silk cloth or dry leaves. [AS. hristlan to rustle; or cf. Sw. rusta to stir, make a riot, or E. rush, v.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To be as this old elm full loth were I, is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of William Watson, Project Gutenberg ebook #13179; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Watson, To be as this old elm full loth were I,, in The Poems of William Watson (1892–1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13179, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/watson-poems/to-be-as-this-old-elm-full-loth-were-i.html, id L26241.
Form and metre
To be as this old elm full loth were I, is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ABAB iA · headB · lieA · shedB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| To be as this old elm full loth were I, | 10 | ·········· |
| That shakes in the autumn storm its palsied head. | 11 | ····/˘··/˘· |
| Hewn by the weird last woodman let me lie | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Ere the path rustle with my foliage shed. | 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.