The Difference I
SINKING down by the gate I discern the thin moon,And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine,But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird’s tune,For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine.
About this text
The Difference I 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, The Difference I, in Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries (1914), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #2863, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hardy-satires/the-difference-i.html, id L24004.
Form and metre
The Difference I is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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 moonA · pineB · tuneA · mineB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| SINKING down by the gate I discern the thin moon, | 12 | /˘·····˘/··· |
| And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine, | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird’s tune, | 12 | ·····/˘····· |
| For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine. | 12 | ····˘/······ |
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.