In Her Precincts
HER house looked cold from the foggy lea,And the square of each window a dull black blurWhere showed no stir:Yes, her gloom within at the lack of meSeemed matching mine at the lack of her.
The black squares grew to be squares of lightAs the eyeshade swathed the house and lawn,And viols gave tone;There was glee within. And I found that nightThe gloom of severance mine alone.
Words in this poem
- glee n.
- Music; minstrelsy; entertainment.
- severance n.
- The act of severing, or the state of being severed; partition; separation. Milman.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
In Her Precincts is in the public domain. This text is taken from Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #3255; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Thomas Hardy, In Her Precincts, in Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3255, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hardy-moments-of-vision/in-her-precincts.html, id L24154.
Form and metre
In Her Precincts is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 77%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ABBAB leaA · blurB · stirB · meA · herB
- 2 A-BAB lightA · lawn · toneB · nightA · aloneB
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| HER house looked cold from the foggy lea, | 9 | ······/˘· |
| And the square of each window a dull black blur | 11 | ·····/˘···· |
| Where showed no stir: | 4 | ···· |
| Yes, her gloom within at the lack of me | 10 | ·········· |
| Seemed matching mine at the lack of her. | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| The black squares grew to be squares of light | 9 | ········· |
| As the eyeshade swathed the house and lawn, | 9 | ··/······ |
| And viols gave tone; | 4 | ···· |
| There was glee within. And I found that night | 10 | ·········· |
| The gloom of severance mine alone. | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
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.