Revenants
At dead of unseen night ghosts of the departed assemblingFlit to the graves, where each in body had burial.Ah, then rēvisiting my sad heart their desolate tombTroop the desires and loves vainly buried long ago.
Words in this poem
- unseen a.
- Not seen or discovered.
- flit a.
- Nimble; quick; swift. See Fleet.
- burial n.
- A grave; a tomb; a place of sepulture. [OE. buriel, buriels, grave, tomb, AS. byrgels, fr. byrgan to bury, and akin to OS. burgisli sepulcher.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Revenants 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, Revenants, in The Growth of Love, and Other Poems (1873–1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #37804, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bridges-shorter-poems/from-the-french.html, id L01854.
Form and metre
Revenants is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 13.2 syllables. 2 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 |
|---|---|---|
| At dead of unseen night ghosts of the departed assembling | 15 | ···˘/····˘/˘˘/˘ |
| Flit to the graves, where each in body had burial. | 12 | ·······/˘·/˘ |
| Ah, then rēvisiting my sad heart their desolate tomb | 13 | ··········/˘· |
| Troop the desires and loves vainly buried long ago. | 13 | ··˘/··/˘/˘·˘/ |
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.