At Day-Close in November
THE ten hours’ light is abating,And a late bird flies across,Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,Give their black heads a toss.
Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,Float past like specks in the eye;I set every tree in my June time,And now they obscure the sky.
And the children who ramble through hereConceive that there never has beenA time when no tall trees grew here,A time when none will be seen.
About this text
At Day-Close in November is in the public domain. This text is taken from Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces, Project Gutenberg ebook #2863; 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, At Day-Close in November, in Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries (1914), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #2863, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hardy-satires/at-day-close-in-november.html, id L24039.
Form and metre
At Day-Close in November is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 74%).
See 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 ABAB abatingA · acrossB · waitingA · tossB
- 2 ABAB timeA · eyeB · timeA · skyB
- 3 A-A- hereA · been · hereA · seen
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 ten hours’ light is abating, | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| And a late bird flies across, | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Where the pines, like waltzers waiting, | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Give their black heads a toss. | 6 | ······ |
| Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Float past like specks in the eye; | 7 | ······· |
| I set every tree in my June time, | 9 | ··/˘····· |
| And now they obscure the sky. | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| And the children who ramble through here | 9 | ··/˘·/˘·· |
| Conceive that there never has been | 8 | ˘/··/˘·· |
| A time when no tall trees grew here, | 8 | ········ |
| A time when none will be seen. | 7 | ······· |
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.