Sunset
A sloop of amber slips awayUpon an ether sea,And wrecks in peace a purple tar,The son of ecstasy.
About this text
Sunset 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, Sunset, in Poems (1890–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12242, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dickinson-poems/sunset-2.html, id L03800.
Form and metre
Sunset is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A sloop of amber slips away | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| Upon an ether sea, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| And wrecks in peace a purple tar, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The son of ecstasy. | 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.