Good-Bye My Fancy
Good-bye my fancy--(I had a word to say,But ’tis not quite the time--The best of any man’s word or say,Is when its proper place arrives--and for its meaning,I keep mine till the last.)
About this text
Good-Bye My Fancy is in the public domain. This text is taken from Leaves of Grass, Project Gutenberg ebook #1322; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Walt Whitman, Good-Bye My Fancy, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/good-bye-my-fancy.html, id L04122.
Form and metre
Good-Bye My Fancy is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. The lines average 11.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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-- sayA · sayA · meaning · last
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Good-bye my fancy--(I had a word to say, | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| But ’tis not quite the time--The best of any man’s word or say, | 15 | ·········/˘···· |
| Is when its proper place arrives--and for its meaning, | 13 | ···/˘·˘/···/˘ |
| I keep mine till the last.) | 6 | ······ |
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.