I CAST MY NET INTO THE SEA
by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941)
In the morning I cast my net into the sea.
I
dragged up from the dark abyss things of strange aspect and strange beauty
-- some shone like a smile, some glistened like tears, and some were flushed
like the cheeks of a bride.
When with the day's burden I went
home, my love was sitting in the garden idly tearing the leaves of a flower.
I hesitated for a moment, and then placed at her feet all
that I had dragged up, and stood silent.
She glanced at them
and said, "What strange things are these? I know not of what use they are!"
I bowed my head in shame and thought, "I have not fought for
these, I did not buy them in the market; they are not fit gifts for her."
Then the whole night through I flung them one by one into the
street.
In the morning travellers came; they picked them up
and carried them into far countries.
"I cast my net into the sea" is reprinted from The Gardener.
Rabindranath Tagore. New York: The Macmillan
Company
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Rhythm and Meter:
The term rhythm refers to any wave like recurrence of motion or sound.
Meter is the kind of rhythm we can tap our foot to. Metrical language is
called verse; non metrical language is prose.
The foot is the metrical unit by which a line of poetry is measured; it
usually consists of one stressed or accented ( ' ) and one or two unstressed
or unaccented syllables ( - ).
Name of Foot
Name of Meter
Measure
Iamb
Iambic
- '
Trochee
Trochaic
' -
Anapest
Anapestic
- - '
Dactyl
Dactylic
' - -
Spondee
Spondaic
' '
Pyrrhus
Pyrrhic
- -
The secondary unit of measurement, the line, is measured by naming the
number of feet in it. A line that ends with a stressed syllable is said to
have a masculine ending and a line that ends with an extra syllable is said
to have a feminine ending. A pause within a line is called a caesura and is
identified by a double vertical line (||). A line with a pause at its end is
called end-stopped line, whereas a line that continues without a pause is
called run-on line or enjambment. The following metrical names are used to
identify the lengths of lines:
Length
Name
one
foot
Monometer
two feet
Dimeter
three feet
Trimeter
four feet
Tetrameter
five feet
Pentameter
six feet
Hexameter
seven feet
Heptameter
eight feet
Octameter
The third unit, the stanza, consists of a group of lines whose metrical
pattern is repeated throughout the poem.
The process of measuring verse
is referred to as scansion. To scan a poem we do these three things: 1. we
identify the prevailing meter, 2. we give a metrical name to the number of
feet in a line, and 3. we describe the stanza pattern or rhyme-scheme.
| Top | 10. Patterns of Traditional Poems
Ballad , or literary ballad, is a long singing poem that tells a story
(usually of love or adventure), written in quatrains - four lines
alternatively of four and three feet - the third line may have internal
rhyme.
Ballade is French in origin and made up of 28 lines, usually three
stanzas of 8 lines and a concluding stanza, called envoy, of 4 lines. The
last line of each stanza is the same and the scheme is ababbcbc and the
envoy's is bcbc.
Blank Verse is made up of unrhymed iambic pentameter lines.
Elegy is a lyric poem written to commemorate someone who is dead.
Epigram is a brief, pointed, and witty poem of no prescribed form.
Free Verse has no identifiable meter, although the lines may have a
rhyme-scheme.
Haiku is an unrhymed poem of seventeen syllables derived from Japanese
verse; it is made up of three lines, lines 1 and 3 have five syllables, line
2 has seven.
Heroic Couplet is two lines of rhyming iambic pentameters.
Limerick is a five-line poem in which lines 1, 2, and 5 are anapestic
trimeters and lines 3 and 4 are anapestic dimeters, rhymed as aabba.
Possible source of origin is Limerick, Ireland.
Lyric is a poem of emotional intensity and expresses powerful feelings.
Narrative form is used to tell a story; it is usually made of ballad
stanzas - four lines alternatively of four and three feet.
Ode, English in origin, is a poem of indefinite length, divided in
10-line stanzas, rhymed, with different schemes for each stanza -
ababcdecde, written in iambic meter.
Parody is a humorous imitation of a serious poem.
Quatrain is a four-line stanza with various meters and rhyme schemes.
Sestina consists of thirty-nine lines divided into six six-line stanzas
and a three-line concluding stanza called an envoy.
Sonnet is a fourteen line poem. The Italian or Petrarchan has two
stanzas: the first of eight lines is called octave and has the rhyme-scheme
abba abba; the second of six lines is called the sestet and has the rhyme
cdecde or cdcdcd. The Spenserian sonnet, developed by Edmund Spenser, has
three quatrains and a heroic couplet, in iambic pentameter with rhymes
ababbcbccdcdee. The English sonnet, developed by Shakespeare, has three
quatrains and a heroic couplet, in iambic pentameter with rhymes
ababcdcdefefgg.
Tercet is a three-line stanza; when all three lines rhyme they are
called a triplet.
Terza Rima consists of interlocking three-line rhyme scheme (aba, bcb).
Villanelle is a fixed form consisting of nineteen lines divided into
six stanzas: five tercets and a a concluding quatrain.