A Prelude
I know only the bare rocks of today.In these lies my brown sea-weed,--green quartz veins bent through the wet shale;in these lie my pools left by the tide--quiet, forgetting waves;on these stiffen white star fish;on these I slip bare footed!
Whispers of the fishy air touch my body;“Sisters,” I say to them.
Words in this poem
- fishy a.
- Consisting of fish; fishlike; having the qualities or taste of fish; abounding in fish.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Prelude is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Book of Poems, Al Que Quiere!, Project Gutenberg ebook #51997; 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 Carlos Williams, A Prelude, in Al Que Quiere! (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #51997, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/williams-al-que-quiere/a-prelude.html, id L01111.
Form and metre
A Prelude is 9 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 73%). 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.9 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 ---A--A today · weed · shale · tideA · waves · fish · footedA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I know only the bare rocks of today. | 10 | ··/˘····˘/ |
| In these lies my brown sea-weed,-- | 7 | ······· |
| green quartz veins bent through the wet shale; | 8 | ········ |
| in these lie my pools left by the tide-- | 9 | ········· |
| quiet, forgetting waves; | 6 | /˘˘/˘· |
| on these stiffen white star fish; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| on these I slip bare footed! | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Whispers of the fishy air touch my body; | 11 | /˘··/˘···/˘ |
| “Sisters,” I say to them. | 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.