The Walk
YOU did not walk with meOf late to the hill-top treeBy the gated ways,As in earlier days;You were weak and lame,So you never came,And I went alone, and I did not mind,Not thinking of you as left behind.
I walked up there to-dayJust in the former way:Surveyed aroundThe familiar groundBy myself again:What difference, then?Only that underlying senseOf the look of a room on returning thence.
Words in this poem
- gated a.
- Having gates. Young.
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Walk 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 Walk, in Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries (1914), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #2863, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hardy-satires/the-walk.html, id L24046.
Form and metre
The Walk is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABBCCDD. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 AABBCCDD meA · treeA · waysB · daysB · lameC · cameC · mindD · behindD
- 2 AABBCCDD dayA · wayA · aroundB · groundB · againC · thenC · senseD · thenceD
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| YOU did not walk with me | 6 | ······ |
| Of late to the hill-top tree | 7 | ······· |
| By the gated ways, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| As in earlier days; | 6 | ··/˘˘· |
| You were weak and lame, | 5 | ····· |
| So you never came, | 5 | ··/˘· |
| And I went alone, and I did not mind, | 10 | ···˘/····· |
| Not thinking of you as left behind. | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| I walked up there to-day | 7 | ··˘···· |
| Just in the former way: | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Surveyed around | 4 | ˘/·· |
| The familiar ground | 5 | ·˘/˘· |
| By myself again: | 5 | ··/˘/ |
| What difference, then? | 5 | ·/˘˘· |
| Only that underlying sense | 8 | /˘··˘/˘· |
| Of the look of a room on returning thence. | 11 | ·······˘/˘· |
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.