Speak

The poem comprises five stanzas of eight lines each. It is written in accentual syllabic verse. This means that the number of stresses and syllables in each line is fixed. The meter is mostly iambic; an iamb is a poetic foot that consists of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. Lines 1-3 and 5-7 in each stanza are iambic trimeters (three stresses per line; six syllables): “Is all | that I | can do” and “And how | the search | would end” (Lines 2, 6) are good examples. Lines 4 and 8 in each stanza are iambic dimeters (two stresses per line; four syllables): “Above | me blind” (Line 8) and “I die | with them” (Line 36).

There are some variations in both meter and syllable count. The fourth line of Stanza 2 has five syllables rather than four. Stanza 3 is irregular, as the speaker announces, with the first and third lines having seven syllables rather than six. These lines end in an extra unstressed syllable, which is known as a feminine ending: “And Jenn | y, oh  | my Jenny” (Line 17).

In terms of meter, Wright sometimes makes a substitution in the first foot of a line, making it a trochee, in which a stressed syllable is followed by an unstressed syllable, rather than an iamb.