A Wink from Hesper, Falling
A WINK from Hesper, fallingFast in the wintry sky,Comes through the even blue,Dear, like a word from you . . .Is it good-bye?
Across the miles between usI send you sigh for sigh.Good-night, sweet friend, good-night:Till life and all take flight,Never good-bye.
Words in this poem
- hesper n.
- The evening; Hesperus. [See Hesperian.]
- wintry a.
- Suitable to winter; resembling winter, or what belongs to winter; brumal; hyemal; cold; stormy; wintery. [AS. wintrig.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Wink from Hesper, Falling is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #1568; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: W. E. Henley, A Wink from Hesper, Falling, in Poems (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1568, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/henley-poems/a-wink-from-hesper-falling.html, id L12425.
Form and metre
A Wink from Hesper, Falling is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 20% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 -ABBA falling · skyA · blueB · youB · byeA
- 2 -ABBA us · sighA · nightB · flightB · byeA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A WINK from Hesper, falling | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Fast in the wintry sky, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Comes through the even blue, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Dear, like a word from you . . . | 6 | ······ |
| Is it good-bye? | 4 | ···· |
| Across the miles between us | 7 | ˘/····· |
| I send you sigh for sigh. | 6 | ······ |
| Good-night, sweet friend, good-night: | 6 | ······ |
| Till life and all take flight, | 6 | ······ |
| Never good-bye. | 4 | /˘·· |
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.