The Glorious Company
“Faces, faces, faces of the streaming marching surge,Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful steep,Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp verge,Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep?
“Whence this wondrous radiance that ye somehow catch and cast,Faces rapt, that one discerns mid the dusky pressHerding in dull wonder, gathering fearful to the Vast?Surely all is dark before, night of nothingness!”
Lo, the Light! (they answer) O the pure, the pulsing Light,Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love,Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height,Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above!
“O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendour blind,Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!--Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined:Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!”
Words in this poem
- streaming a.
- Sending forth streams.
- sunlit a.
- Lighted by the sun.
- wondrous adv.
- In a wonderful or surprising manner or degree; wonderfully. [OE. wonders, adv. (later also adj.). See Wonder, n., and cf. -wards.]
- somehow adv.
- In one way or another; in some way not yet known or designated; by some means; as, the thing must be done somehow; he lives somehow.
- rapt n.
- An ecstasy; a trance. Bp. Morton. [From F. rapt abduction, rape, L. raptus, fr. rapere to seize and carry off, to transport; or fr. E. rapt, a. See Rapt, a., and Rapid.]
- splendour n.
- Great brightness; brilliant luster; brilliancy; as, the splendor ot the sun. B. Jonson. [L. fr. splendere to shine: cf. F. splendeur.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Glorious Company is in the public domain. This text is taken from A chant of love for England, and other poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #71425; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Helen Gray Cone, The Glorious Company, in A Chant of Love for England, and Other Poems (1915), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #71425, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/cone-chant-for-england/the-glorious-company.html, id L22057.
Form and metre
The Glorious Company is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in trochaic heptameter.
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.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABAB surgeA · steepB · vergeA · sweepB
- 2 ABAB castA · pressB · vastA · nothingnessB
- 3 ABAB lightA · loveB · heightA · aboveB
- 4 ABAB blindA · seeB · shinedA · meB
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 trochaic heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| “Faces, faces, faces of the streaming marching surge, | 13 | /˘/˘/˘··/˘/˘· |
| Streaming on the weary road, toward the awful steep, | 13 | /˘··/˘····/˘· |
| Whence your glow and glory, as ye set to that sharp verge, | 13 | ····/˘······· |
| Faces lit as sunlit stars, shining as ye sweep? | 12 | /˘··/··/˘··· |
| “Whence this wondrous radiance that ye somehow catch and cast, | 13 | ··/˘/˘··/···· |
| Faces rapt, that one discerns mid the dusky press | 12 | /˘···˘/··/˘· |
| Herding in dull wonder, gathering fearful to the Vast? | 13 | /˘··/˘/˘/˘··· |
| Surely all is dark before, night of nothingness!” | 12 | /˘·······/˘˘ |
| Lo, the Light! (they answer) O the pure, the pulsing Light, | 13 | ····/˘····/˘· |
| Beating like a heart of life, like a heart of love, | 12 | /˘·········· |
| Soaring, searching, filling all the breadth and depth and height, | 13 | /˘/˘/˘······· |
| Welling, whelming with its peace worlds below, above! | 12 | /˘·········· |
| “O my soul, how art thou to that living Splendour blind, | 13 | ········/˘/˘· |
| Sick with thy desire to see even as these men see!-- | 13 | ···˘/··/˘···· |
| Yet to look upon them is to know that God hath shined: | 13 | ············· |
| Faces lit as sunlit stars, be all my light to me!” | 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.