A Crowded Trolley Car
The rain's cold grains are silver-graySharp as golden sands,A bell is clanging, people swayHanging by their hands.
Supple hands, or gnarled and stiff,Snatch and catch and grope;That face is yellow-pale, as ifThe fellow swung from rope.
Dull like pebbles, sharp like knives,Glances strike and glare,Fingers tangle, Bluebeard's wivesDangle by the hair.
Orchard of the strangest fruitsHanging from the skies;Brothers, yet insensate brutesWho fear each others' eyes.
One man stands as free men stand,As if his soul might beBrave, unbroken; see his handNailed to an oaken tree.
Words in this poem
- gnarled a.
- Knotty; full of knots or gnarls; twisted; crossgrained.
- glare v. i.
- To shine with a bright, dazzling light. [OE. glaren, gloren; cf. AS. glær amber, LG. glaren to glow or burn like coals, D. gloren to glimmer; prob. akin to E. glass.]
- tangle v. t.
- To unite or knit together confusedly; to interweave or interlock, as threads, so as to make it difficult to unravel the knot; to entangle; to ravel. [A frequentative fr. tang seaweed; hence, to twist like seaweed. See Tang seaweed, and cf. Tangle, n.]
- dangle v. i.
- To hang loosely, or with a swinging or jerking motion. [Akin to Dan. dangle, dial. Sw. dangla, Dan. dingle, Sw. dingla, Icel. dingla; perh. from E. ding.]
- insensate a.
- Wanting sensibility; destitute of sense; stupid; foolish. [L. insensatus. See In- not, and Sensate.]
- oaken a.
- Made or consisting of oaks or of the wood of oaks. [AS. acen.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Crowded Trolley Car is in the public domain. This text is taken from Nets to Catch the Wind, Project Gutenberg ebook #6682; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Elinor Wylie, A Crowded Trolley Car, in Nets to Catch the Wind (1921), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6682, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/wylie-nets/a-crowded-trolley-car.html, id L12764.
Form and metre
A Crowded Trolley Car is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 4 of its 5 stanzas. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.3 syllables. 40% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
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 ABAB grayA · sandsB · swayA · handsB
- 2 ABAB stiffA · gropeB · ifA · ropeB
- 3 ABAB knivesA · glareB · wivesA · hairB
- 4 -A-A fruits · skiesA · brutes · eyesA
- 5 ABAB standA · beB · handA · treeB
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The rain's cold grains are silver-gray | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Sharp as golden sands, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| A bell is clanging, people sway | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Hanging by their hands. | 5 | /˘··· |
| Supple hands, or gnarled and stiff, | 7 | /˘····· |
| Snatch and catch and grope; | 5 | ····· |
| That face is yellow-pale, as if | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The fellow swung from rope. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Dull like pebbles, sharp like knives, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Glances strike and glare, | 5 | /˘··· |
| Fingers tangle, Bluebeard's wives | 7 | /˘/˘/·· |
| Dangle by the hair. | 5 | /˘··· |
| Orchard of the strangest fruits | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Hanging from the skies; | 5 | /˘··· |
| Brothers, yet insensate brutes | 7 | /˘·˘/˘· |
| Who fear each others' eyes. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| One man stands as free men stand, | 7 | ······· |
| As if his soul might be | 6 | ······ |
| Brave, unbroken; see his hand | 7 | ·˘/˘··· |
| Nailed to an oaken tree. | 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.