The Ghost
Peace in thy hands,Peace in thine eyes,Peace on thy brow;Flower of a moment in the eternal hour,Peace with me now.
Not a wave breaks,Not a bird calls,My heart, like a sea,Silent after a storm that hath died,Sleeps within me.
All the night's dews,All the world's leaves,All winter's snowSeem with their quiet to have stilled in life's dreamAll sorrowing now.
About this text
The Ghost 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, The Ghost, in The Listeners and Other Poems (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22569, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/de-la-mare-listeners/the-ghost.html, id L17111.
Form and metre
The Ghost is 15 lines in 3 stanzas of 5 lines each. 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.3 syllables. 13% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 --A-A hands · eyes · browA · hour · nowA
- 2 --A-A breaks · calls · seaA · died · meA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Peace in thy hands, | 4 | ···· |
| Peace in thine eyes, | 4 | ···· |
| Peace on thy brow; | 4 | ···· |
| Flower of a moment in the eternal hour, | 11 | /··/˘··˘/˘/ |
| Peace with me now. | 4 | ···· |
| Not a wave breaks, | 4 | ···· |
| Not a bird calls, | 4 | ···· |
| My heart, like a sea, | 5 | ····· |
| Silent after a storm that hath died, | 9 | /˘······· |
| Sleeps within me. | 4 | ···· |
| All the night's dews, | 4 | ···· |
| All the world's leaves, | 4 | ···· |
| All winter's snow | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Seem with their quiet to have stilled in life's dream | 10 | ···/······ |
| All sorrowing now. | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
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.