Winter Quiet
Limb to limb, mouth to mouthwith the bleached grasssilver mist lies upon the back yardsamong the outhouses.The dwarf treespirouette awkwardly to it--whirling round on one toe;the big tree smiles and glances upward!Tense with suppressed excitementthe fences watch where the groundhas humped an aching shoulder for the ecstasy.
Words in this poem
- bleached a.
- Whitened; make white.
- pirouette n.
- A whirling or turning on the toes in dancing. [F.; of uncertain origin.]
- aching a.
- That aches; continuously painful. See Ache.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Winter Quiet 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, Winter Quiet, in Al Que Quiere! (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #51997, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/williams-al-que-quiere/winter-quiet.html, id L01113.
Form and metre
Winter Quiet is 11 lines in a single stanza. 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 55% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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------ mouth · grass · yards · outhousesA · treesA · it · toe · upward · excitement · ground · ecstasy
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Limb to limb, mouth to mouth | 6 | ······ |
| with the bleached grass | 4 | ···· |
| silver mist lies upon the back yards | 9 | /˘······· |
| among the outhouses. | 6 | ···/·˘ |
| The dwarf trees | 3 | ··· |
| pirouette awkwardly to it-- | 8 | ·˘//˘˘·· |
| whirling round on one toe; | 6 | /˘···· |
| the big tree smiles and glances upward! | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| Tense with suppressed excitement | 7 | ··˘/˘/˘ |
| the fences watch where the ground | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| has humped an aching shoulder for the ecstasy. | 12 | ···/˘/˘··/˘˘ |
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.