A Haunted Room
In the dim chamber whence but yesterdayPassed my beloved, filled with awe I stand;And haunting Loves fluttering on every handWhisper her praises who is far away.A thousand delicate fancies glance and playOn every object which her robes have fanned,And tenderest thoughts and hopes bloom and expandIn the sweet memory of her beauty's ray.Ah! could that glass but hold the faintest traceOf all the loveliness once mirrored there,The clustering glory of the shadowy hairThat framed so well the dear young angel face!But no, it shows my own face, full of care,And my heart is her beauty's dwelling place.
Words in this poem
- loveliness n.
- The state or quality of being lovely. [From Lovely.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Haunted Room is in the public domain. This text is taken from Pike County Ballads and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #6062; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Hay, A Haunted Room, in Pike County Ballads and Other Poems (1871), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6062, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hay-pike-county/a-haunted-room.html, id L21600.
Form and metre
A Haunted Room is 14 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 57% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 77%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 ABBAABBACDDCDC yesterdayA · standB · handB · awayA · playA · fannedB · expandB · rayA · traceC · thereD · hairD · faceC · careD · placeC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| In the dim chamber whence but yesterday | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Passed my beloved, filled with awe I stand; | 10 | ·˘·˘/····· |
| And haunting Loves fluttering on every hand | 10 | ·/˘·/˘·/˘· |
| Whisper her praises who is far away. | 10 | /˘·/˘···˘/ |
| A thousand delicate fancies glance and play | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘··· |
| On every object which her robes have fanned, | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| And tenderest thoughts and hopes bloom and expand | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| In the sweet memory of her beauty's ray. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Ah! could that glass but hold the faintest trace | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Of all the loveliness once mirrored there, | 10 | ···/˘˘·/˘· |
| The clustering glory of the shadowy hair | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| That framed so well the dear young angel face! | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| But no, it shows my own face, full of care, | 10 | ·········· |
| And my heart is her beauty's dwelling place. | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
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.