Sunday Evening
THE noontide showers have drifted past,The sunset’s on the hill,The lights be gleaming through the dusk,Adown by Clincher’s Mill.
It’s such a pretty evening, maid,All quiet-like, and blue;With here and there a darksome cloudThat lets the silver through.
The folk be all in Sunday best,I see’d ’em passing by;Then come along the quiet lane,And walk a bit with I.
Words in this poem
- noontide n.
- The time of noon; midday. [From noon + tide time; cf. AS. n the ninth hour.]
- adown adv.
- From a higher to a lower situation; downward; down, to or on the ground. [OE. adun, adoun, adune. AS. of dune off the hill. See Down.]
- darksome a.
- Dark; gloomy; obscure; shaded; cheerless.
- folk n.
- In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sunday Evening is in the public domain. This text is taken from Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #50591; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Radclyffe Hall, Sunday Evening, in Songs of Three Counties, and Other Poems (1913), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #50591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hall-three-counties/sunday-evening.html, id L22669.
Form and metre
Sunday Evening is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 98%).
See other poems in common measure.
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 past · hillA · dusk · millA
- 2 -A-A maid · blueA · cloud · throughA
- 3 -A-A best · byA · lane · iA
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| THE noontide showers have drifted past, | 8 | ·/˘/·/˘· |
| The sunset’s on the hill, | 6 | ·/···· |
| The lights be gleaming through the dusk, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Adown by Clincher’s Mill. | 6 | ˘/·/˘· |
| It’s such a pretty evening, maid, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| All quiet-like, and blue; | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| With here and there a darksome cloud | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| That lets the silver through. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The folk be all in Sunday best, | 8 | ·····/·· |
| I see’d ’em passing by; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Then come along the quiet lane, | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| And walk a bit with I. | 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.