Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me
Year that trembled and reel’d beneath me!Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me,A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken’d me,Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself,Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled?And sullen hymns of defeat?
Words in this poem
- sunshine n.
- The light of the sun, or the place where it shines; the direct rays of the sun, the place where they fall, or the warmth and light which they give.
- sullen a.
- Lonely; solitary; desolate. Wyclif (Job iii. 14). [OE. solein, solain, lonely, sullen; through Old French fr. (assumed) LL. solanus solitary, fr. L. solus alone. See Sole, a.]
- defeat v. t.
- To undo; to disfigure; to destroy. [From F. défait, OF. desfait, p. p. ofe défaire, OF. desfaire, to undo; L. dis- + facere to do. See Feat, Fact, and cf. Disfashion.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me 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, Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me, in Leaves of Grass (1855–1892), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/whitman-leaves/year-that-trembled-and-reel-d-beneath-me.html, id L03953.
Form and metre
Year That Trembled and Reel’d Beneath Me is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 72%). 82% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 11.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic heptameter.
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 AAA--- meA · meA · meA · myself · baffled · defeat
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 heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Year that trembled and reel’d beneath me! | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| Your summer wind was warm enough, yet the air I breathed froze me, | 15 | ·/˘···˘/······· |
| A thick gloom fell through the sunshine and darken’d me, | 12 | ······/··/˘· |
| Must I change my triumphant songs? said I to myself, | 13 | ····˘/˘·····/ |
| Must I indeed learn to chant the cold dirges of the baffled? | 15 | ··˘/·····/˘··/˘ |
| And sullen hymns of defeat? | 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.