Skip to main content

I need help figuring out the meter of the poem God's Grandeur.

Overall, the poem is in iambic pentameter, but there are some irregularities in the first five lines.


An iamb is a poetic foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one. In iambic pentameter, each line has five iambs in a row. This is a very natural meter for English.


Most of the poem "God's Grandeur" can be scanned in iambic pentameter:



And though the last lights off the black West went,


Oh, mor-ning, at the brown brink east-ward, springs --



Read the the bold syllables as stressed and these lines will fall naturally into iambic pentameter.


The first few lines of the poem do not work this way. The first line contains two iambs followed by two anapests. (An anapest is a foot with two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed one.)



The world is charged with the gran-deur of God.



Anapests usually give a line a jaunty feel, as if it is moving along quickly. In this case, it gives the poem a conversational feel and gives us the sense that the poet is charging headlong into the poem, eager to tell us about God's grandeur.


Line two can be read to contains five iambs, but line three departs from iambic pentameter again, this time with six iambs. The extra beat in line three gives the line a statelier feel which matches the idea of something "gathering to a greatness."



It gath-ers to a great-ness, like the ooze of oil



Line four has five feet, four of which are iambs, but the first one ("Crushed. Why") is a spondee, a foot in which both syllables are stressed. The spondee brings the reader up short, preparing us for the cacophony that comes in the rest of the line as well as the frustration it is expressing.


Line five begins with the awkward word "generations." This forces the line to be scanned as beginning with two anapests, followed by two iambs:



Ge-ne-ra-tions have trod, have trod, have trod,



We can almost hear treading feet in the line (slowing down with weariness toward the end, as they move from anapests to iambs), and the fact that the line has only four feet instead of five creates a sense of urgency and incompleteness.


For definitions of the different kinds of poetic feet, see the link below.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

etymology - Origin of the greeting "Sweet dreams".

Does anybody know the etymology of the phrase "sweet dreams"? I tried googling but did not find anything satisfying. Is this a relatively new phrase of the modern world or has this been in use for some time? I think it's the latter one. Answer The OED has the interjection as "a farewell to someone going to bed" from the 20th century: 1908 Sears Roebuck Catal. 198/1 Tenor Solos..Good Bye, Sweet Dreams, Good Bye. But it goes back until at least the 19th and possibly 18th centuries. John Wolcot, writing under the pseudonym of Peter Pindar, used it in his poem "Orson and Ellen; A Legendary Tale" published in 1801: Also from 1801 in The infernal Quixote (Page 287) by Charles Lucas: In the March 1776 of The Universal Magazine was published "The Serenade. A Pastoral Tale. From the German of Gesner" , where the shepherd Daphnis watches over his beloved as she sleeps and sings: The same tale appears in 1776's as Idyl XI, " Daphnis ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What are the similarities between the relationships of the characters in The Outsiders and Romeo and Juliet?

At first glance, it might appear as if the characters in  The Outsiders  by S. E. Hinton and  Romeo and Juliet  by William Shakespeare do not have much in common; however, when one isolates the core of the conflicts, it becomes clear that the relationships in both stories are rooted in rivalry and secrecy.  In both  The Outsiders  and  Romeo and Juliet , an overarching theme is rivalry. While   socioeconomic status separates the greasers from the Socs in The Outsiders , last names separates the Montagues from the Capulets, who appear to be relatively equal in terms of socioeconomic status. Due to these rivalries, there are instances of deadly interactions in both stories. In  The Outsiders , Johnny kills Bob (whether his actions were justified or not is debatable). In  Romeo and Juliet , Romeo kills Tybalt and Paris, and Tybalt kills Mercutio. These deaths have profound effects on the main characters. In Ponyboy's case, the Johnny's death and other events in the novel inspire h...
Post a Comment
Read more