A poem can say a lot in a few lines, and that is what makes it hard to read at first. The Word.Studio Poem Analyzer helps you slow down and see how a poem works. Paste in any poem and in about a minute you get its meaning in plain English, the literary devices used line by line, the rhyme scheme and the meter, all explained at your grade level.
To start, just fill out the form.
The Your Poem field is where you paste the poem. It is the only required field. Paste the whole poem and keep its line breaks and stanza breaks, because the line numbers, the rhyme scheme and the meter all depend on where each line ends. The tool reads only the text you paste, so if a line is missing or typed wrong, the analysis will follow your version.
The Title and Poet field is optional. Adding something like Sonnet 18 by William Shakespeare gives the analysis useful background about the poet and the period. It never replaces the text you pasted.
The Grade Level option sets how the analysis is written. Middle school keeps the language simple and the terms basic. High school uses the standard terms you’ll see in English class. AP Lit & college goes deeper into form, sound and competing readings.
When you’re ready, hit “Analyze Poem” and wait about 30 to 60 seconds. Use the copy button to save the analysis in your notes.
What the Analysis Includes
- At a Glance is a quick table with the poem’s form, speaker, tone, theme, rhyme scheme and meter.
- What It Means sums up what happens in the poem, walks through it stanza by stanza and ends with its deeper message.
- Line by Line: Literary Devices is a table of the devices in each line (metaphor, imagery, enjambment and more) and what each one does. Long poems are covered stanza by stanza.
- Rhyme Scheme gives the pattern in letters, shows how it was worked out and points out slant rhymes and internal rhymes.
- Meter names the rhythm, marks the stressed syllables in two lines and shows where the poet breaks the pattern.
- Questions to Think About gives you three discussion questions tied to specific lines.
How to Find a Poem’s Rhyme Scheme
A rhyme scheme is the pattern of rhymes at the ends of lines, written with letters. Give the first line’s last sound the letter A. If the next line ends with a new sound, it gets B. Any line that rhymes with an earlier line gets that line’s letter again. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 18 opens with “day,” “temperate,” “May” and “date,” so its first four lines are ABAB.
Go by sound, not spelling. “Love” and “move” look alike but don’t rhyme, while “through” and “blue” do. Rhymes that are close but not exact, like “me” and “Immortality” in Emily Dickinson, are called slant rhymes or near rhymes. Rhymes inside a line, like “dreary” and “weary” in Poe’s The Raven, are internal rhymes.
How to Find a Poem’s Meter
Meter is the beat of a poem: its pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables. To find it, read a line out loud, split it into syllables and mark the ones your voice leans on. Then look for the pattern that repeats. Each repeating unit is called a foot.
- Iamb: unstressed then stressed, as in “a-WAY.” The most common foot in English poetry.
- Trochee: stressed then unstressed, as in “GAR-den.”
- Anapest: two unstressed then one stressed, as in “in-ter-VENE.”
- Dactyl: one stressed then two unstressed, as in “MER-ri-ly.”
- Spondee: two stressed syllables in a row, as in “HEART-BREAK.”
Then count the feet in a line. Four feet is tetrameter, five is pentameter and six is hexameter. So iambic pentameter means five iambs per line, about ten syllables, as in Thomas Gray’s “the CUR-few TOLLS the KNELL of PART-ing DAY.” Common meter, used in many hymns and in Emily Dickinson’s poems, switches between lines of four beats and three beats. Free verse has no regular meter at all; its rhythm comes from line length, repetition and the way sentences break across lines.
Common Literary Devices in Poetry
- Metaphor calls one thing another thing to show how they are alike.
- Simile compares two things using “like” or “as.”
- Personification gives human qualities to something that isn’t human.
- Imagery uses details that appeal to the senses: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell.
- Alliteration repeats the first consonant sound in nearby words, as in “weak and weary.”
- Assonance repeats vowel sounds in nearby words.
- Enjambment lets a sentence run past the end of a line without a pause.
- Caesura is a strong pause in the middle of a line, often marked by punctuation.
- Anaphora repeats the same word or phrase at the start of several lines.
- Symbolism uses an object or image to stand for a bigger idea.
- Refrain is a line or phrase that comes back again and again, like “Nevermore.”
Using the Poem Analyzer in Class
Teachers can link straight to this page from Google Classroom or any learning platform, and students can use it without an account. It works best after students have read the poem on their own. Have them write their own reading first, then compare it with the analysis and with each other, and use the discussion questions to start the conversation.
AI can make mistakes, especially with meter, where some lines can be read more than one way. Treat the analysis as a second opinion to check against your own reading, not as the final answer.
Analyzing Song Lyrics Instead?
Song lyrics are poems set to music, and you can paste them here too. For a breakdown of a song’s story, symbols and the artist’s intent, try the Song Meaning Analyzer. To write a poem of your own in any form, rhyme scheme or meter, try the Poetry Machine.
