The skies are strown with stars
THE skies are strown with stars,The streets are fresh with dewA thin moon drifts to westward,The night is hushed and cheerful.My thought is quick with you.
Near windows gleam and laugh,And far away a trainClanks glowing through the stillness:A great content’s in all things,And life is not in vain.
Words in this poem
- stillness n.
- The quality or state of being still; quietness; silence; calmness; inactivity.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The skies are strown with stars 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, The skies are strown with stars, in Poems (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1568, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/henley-poems/the-skies-are-strown-with-stars.html, id L12406.
Form and metre
The skies are strown with stars is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.5 syllables. 3 lines end 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 -A--A stars · dewA · westward · cheerful · youA
- 2 -A--A laugh · trainA · stillness · things · vainA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| THE skies are strown with stars, | 6 | ······ |
| The streets are fresh with dew | 6 | ······ |
| A thin moon drifts to westward, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| The night is hushed and cheerful. | 8 | ····˘·/˘ |
| My thought is quick with you. | 6 | ······ |
| Near windows gleam and laugh, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| And far away a train | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| Clanks glowing through the stillness: | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| A great content’s in all things, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| And life is not in vain. | 6 | ······ |
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.