Beware!
An ominous bird sang from its branch,'Beware, O Wanderer!Night 'mid her flowers of glamourie spilledDraws swiftly near:
'Night with her darkened caravans,Piled deep with silver and myrrh,Draws from the portals of the East,O Wanderer near!
'Night who walks plumèd through the fieldsOf stars that strangely stir--Smitten to fire by the sandals of himWho walks with her.'
Words in this poem
- piled a.
- Having a pile or point; pointed. [From 2d Pile.]
- strangely adv.
- As something foreign, or not one's own; in a manner adapted to something foreign and strange.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Beware! is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Listeners and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #22569; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Walter de la Mare, Beware!, in The Listeners and Other Poems (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22569, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/de-la-mare-listeners/beware.html, id L17104.
Form and metre
Beware! is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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.
- 3 -A-A fields · stirA · him · herA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| An ominous bird sang from its branch, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| 'Beware, O Wanderer! | 6 | ˘/·/˘˘ |
| Night 'mid her flowers of glamourie spilled | 9 | ···/·/˘˘· |
| Draws swiftly near: | 4 | ·/˘· |
| 'Night with her darkened caravans, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Piled deep with silver and myrrh, | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Draws from the portals of the East, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| O Wanderer near! | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| 'Night who walks plumèd through the fields | 7 | ······· |
| Of stars that strangely stir-- | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Smitten to fire by the sandals of him | 10 | /˘·/··/˘·· |
| Who walks with her.' | 4 | ···· |
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.