Changeless
WE say, “The sun has set,” and we sorrow soreAs we watch the darkness creep the landscape o’er,And the thick shadows fall, and the night draw on;And we mourn for the brightness lost, and the vanished sun.
And all the time the sun in the self-same placeWaits, ready to clasp the earth in his embrace,Ready to give to all of his stintless ray;And ’tis we who have “set,” it is we who have turned away!
“The Lord has hidden his face,” we sadly cry,As we sit in the night of grief with no helper by.“Guiding uncounted worlds in their courses dim,How should our little pain be marked by him?”
But all the while that we mourn, the Lord stands near,And the Son divine is waiting to help and hear;And ’tis we who hide our faces, and blindly turn away,While the Sun of the soul shines on mid the perfect day.
Words in this poem
- stintless a.
- Without stint or restraint.
- sadly adv.
- Wearily; heavily; firmly.
- blindly adv.
- Without sight, discernment, or understanding; without thought, investigation, knowledge, or purpose of one's own.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Changeless is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Few More Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #49518; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Susan Coolidge, Changeless, in A Few More Verses (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #49518, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/coolidge-few-more-verses/changeless.html, id L23505.
Form and metre
Changeless is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is AABB, complete in 3 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 74%).
See other poems in iambic hexameter.
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.
- 2 AABB placeA · embraceA · rayB · awayB
- 3 AABB cryA · byA · dimB · himB
- 4 AABB nearA · hearA · awayB · dayB
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 hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| WE say, “The sun has set,” and we sorrow sore | 11 | ········/˘· |
| As we watch the darkness creep the landscape o’er, | 11 | ····/˘··/·· |
| And the thick shadows fall, and the night draw on; | 11 | ···/······· |
| And we mourn for the brightness lost, and the vanished sun. | 13 | ·····/˘···/˘· |
| And all the time the sun in the self-same place | 11 | ··········· |
| Waits, ready to clasp the earth in his embrace, | 11 | ·/˘······˘/ |
| Ready to give to all of his stintless ray; | 11 | /˘······/˘· |
| And ’tis we who have “set,” it is we who have turned away! | 14 | ············˘/ |
| “The Lord has hidden his face,” we sadly cry, | 11 | ···/˘···/˘· |
| As we sit in the night of grief with no helper by. | 13 | ··········/˘· |
| “Guiding uncounted worlds in their courses dim, | 11 | /˘·/˘···/˘· |
| How should our little pain be marked by him?” | 11 | ··/˘/˘····· |
| But all the while that we mourn, the Lord stands near, | 11 | ··········· |
| And the Son divine is waiting to help and hear; | 12 | ···˘/·/˘···· |
| And ’tis we who hide our faces, and blindly turn away, | 14 | ·····//˘·/˘·˘/ |
| While the Sun of the soul shines on mid the perfect day. | 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.