Song for Dark Nights
His Imperial Majesty the Moon!Sweep down, O moon, past wind-swept towns and cultivated fields,Past me and all my men that yearn and strive toward gods.
Lying in deep grass my throat hurts and my body aches.I am with child to dreams.Cities new-built and all the squirming, changing hoards of menPress down on me.They press me deep into the ground.
In the air above my head men wriggle into life,The male milk in my breast begins to stir,Into my body out of many prairies wideCome roots of thought.
Since gods and peoples stood defying time,Since men, like little dogs, have bayed the moon,Since hard-limbed stags have raced into the dawn,I have been here, time serving for my gods.
In the deep ground roots and seeds,In my breast seeds growing.I'll not flame to life and cry for joy.My spirit breathes its story of decay.
Words in this poem
- yearn v. t.
- To pain; to grieve; to vex. [Also earn, ern; probably a corruption of OE. ermen to grieve, AS. ierman, yrman, or geierman, geyrman, fr. earm wretched, poor; akin to D. & G. arm, Icel. armr,]
- bayed a.
- Having a bay or bays.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Song for Dark Nights is in the public domain. This text is taken from Mid-American Chants (New York: John Lane Company; London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1918), Internet Archive; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sherwood Anderson, Song for Dark Nights, in Mid-American Chants (1918), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/anderson-mid-american-chants/song-for-dark-nights.html, id L29475.
Form and metre
Song for Dark Nights is 20 lines in 5 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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.
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 iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| His Imperial Majesty the Moon! | 10 | ·˘/˘˘/˘˘·· |
| Sweep down, O moon, past wind-swept towns and cultivated fields, | 14 | ·········/˘·˘· |
| Past me and all my men that yearn and strive toward gods. | 13 | ············· |
| Lying in deep grass my throat hurts and my body aches. | 13 | /˘········/˘· |
| I am with child to dreams. | 6 | ······ |
| Cities new-built and all the squirming, changing hoards of men | 14 | /˘·····/˘/˘··· |
| Press down on me. | 4 | ···· |
| They press me deep into the ground. | 8 | ········ |
| In the air above my head men wriggle into life, | 13 | ········/˘··· |
| The male milk in my breast begins to stir, | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| Into my body out of many prairies wide | 12 | ···/˘··/˘/˘· |
| Come roots of thought. | 4 | ···· |
| Since gods and peoples stood defying time, | 10 | ···/˘·˘/˘· |
| Since men, like little dogs, have bayed the moon, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Since hard-limbed stags have raced into the dawn, | 10 | ·········· |
| I have been here, time serving for my gods. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| In the deep ground roots and seeds, | 7 | ······· |
| In my breast seeds growing. | 6 | ····/˘ |
| I'll not flame to life and cry for joy. | 9 | ········· |
| My spirit breathes its story of decay. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·˘/ |
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.