Chickory and Daisies I
Lift your flowerson bitter stemschickory!Lift them upout of the scorched ground!Bear no foliagebut give yourselfwholly to that!
Strain under themyou bitter stemsthat no beast eats--and scorn greyness!Into the heat with them:cool!luxuriant! sky-blue!The earth cracks andis shriveled up;the wind moans piteously;the sky goes outif you should fail.
About this text
Chickory and Daisies I 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, Chickory and Daisies I, in Al Que Quiere! (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #51997, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/williams-al-que-quiere/chickory-and-daisies-i.html, id L01090.
Form and metre
Chickory and Daisies I is 20 lines in 2 verse paragraphs. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is iambic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 4.0 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 45% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic dimeter.
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.
- 2 A---A------- themA · stems · eats · greyness · themA · cool · blue · and · up · piteously · out · fail
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 dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Lift your flowers | 4 | ··/˘ |
| on bitter stems | 4 | ·/˘· |
| chickory! | 3 | ··· |
| Lift them up | 3 | ··· |
| out of the scorched ground! | 5 | ····· |
| Bear no foliage | 4 | ··/˘ |
| but give yourself | 4 | ··˘/ |
| wholly to that! | 4 | /˘·· |
| Strain under them | 4 | ···· |
| you bitter stems | 4 | ·/˘· |
| that no beast eats-- | 4 | ···· |
| and scorn greyness! | 4 | ···· |
| Into the heat with them: | 6 | ······ |
| cool! | 1 | · |
| luxuriant! sky-blue! | 5 | ˘/˘·· |
| The earth cracks and | 4 | ···· |
| is shriveled up; | 4 | ·/˘· |
| the wind moans piteously; | 6 | ······ |
| the sky goes out | 4 | ···· |
| if you should fail. | 4 | ···· |
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.