A Picture
I strolled last eve across the lonely down;One solitary picture struck my eye:A distant ploughboy stood against the sky--How far he seemed above the noisy town!
Upon the bosom of a cloud the sodLaid its bruised cheek as he moved slowly by,And, watching him, I asked myself if IIn very truth stood half as near to God.
Words in this poem
- ploughboy n.
- A boy that drives or guides a team in plowing; a young rustic.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Picture is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of Passion, Project Gutenberg ebook #16776; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ella Wheeler Wilcox, A Picture, in Poems of Passion (1883), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16776, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/wilcox-passion/a-picture.html, id L22218.
Form and metre
A Picture is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
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 ABBA downA · eyeB · skyB · townA
- 2 ABBA sodA · byB · iB · godA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I strolled last eve across the lonely down; | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| One solitary picture struck my eye: | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘··· |
| A distant ploughboy stood against the sky-- | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| How far he seemed above the noisy town! | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Upon the bosom of a cloud the sod | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Laid its bruised cheek as he moved slowly by, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And, watching him, I asked myself if I | 10 | ·/˘····/·· |
| In very truth stood half as near to God. | 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.