Anniversary
Praising thee the solemn festival I celebrate.Unto us all our days are love's anniversaries, each oneIn turn hath ripen'd something of our happiness.So, lest heart-contented adown life easily floating,We note not the passage while living in the delight,I have honour'd always the attentive vigil of Autumn,And thy day set apart holy to fair Memory.
Words in this poem
- adown adv.
- From a higher to a lower situation; downward; down, to or on the ground. [OE. adun, adoun, adune. AS. of dune off the hill. See Down.]
- vigil n.
- Abstinence from sleep, whether at a time when sleep is customary or not; the act of keeping awake, or the state of being awake, or the state of being awake; sleeplessness; wakefulness; watch. [OE. vigile, L. vigilia, from vigil awake, watchful, probably akin to E. wake: cf. F. vigile. See Wake, v. i., and cf. Reveille, Surveillance, Vedette, Vegetable]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Anniversary is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of Robert Bridges, Excluding the Eight Dramas, Project Gutenberg ebook #37804; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Bridges, Anniversary, in The Growth of Love, and Other Poems (1873–1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #37804, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bridges-shorter-poems/anniversary-2.html, id L01856.
Form and metre
Anniversary is 7 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The lines average 12.9 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Praising thee the solemn festival I celebrate. | 12 | /˘··/˘/˘·/˘· |
| Unto us all our days are love's anniversaries, each one | 14 | ····/····˘/˘·· |
| In turn hath ripen'd something of our happiness. | 11 | ···/˘/˘·//˘ |
| So, lest heart-contented adown life easily floating, | 13 | ···˘/˘˘/·/˘/˘ |
| We note not the passage while living in the delight, | 13 | ····/˘·/˘··˘/ |
| I have honour'd always the attentive vigil of Autumn, | 15 | ····/˘·˘/˘/˘·/˘ |
| And thy day set apart holy to fair Memory. | 12 | ····˘//˘··/˘ |
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.