Evening
The cricket sang,And set the sun,And workmen finished, one by one,Their seam the day upon.
The low grass loaded with the dew,The twilight stood as strangers doWith hat in hand, polite and new,To stay as if, or go.
A vastness, as a neighbor, came, --A wisdom without face or name,A peace, as hemispheres at home, --And so the night became.
Words in this poem
- polite a.
- Smooth; polished. [L. politus, p. p. of polire to polish: cf. F. poli. See Polish, v.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Evening is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems by Emily Dickinson, Three Series, Complete, Project Gutenberg ebook #12242; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Emily Dickinson, Evening, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/evening.html, id L03798.
Form and metre
Evening is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 97%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.8 syllables. 8% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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.
- 1 -AA- sang · sunA · oneA · upon
- 2 AAA- dewA · doA · newA · go
- 3 AA-A cameA · nameA · home · becameA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The cricket sang, | 4 | ·/˘· |
| And set the sun, | 4 | ···· |
| And workmen finished, one by one, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Their seam the day upon. | 6 | ······ |
| The low grass loaded with the dew, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The twilight stood as strangers do | 8 | ·/···/˘· |
| With hat in hand, polite and new, | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| To stay as if, or go. | 6 | ······ |
| A vastness, as a neighbor, came, -- | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| A wisdom without face or name, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| A peace, as hemispheres at home, -- | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And so the night became. | 6 | ····˘/ |
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.