To M. M. M‘B
ABOVE the Crags that fade and gloomStarts the bare knee of Arthur’s Seat;Ridged high against the evening bloom,The Old Town rises, street on street;With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead,Like rampired walls the houses lean,All spired and domed and turreted,Sheer to the valley’s darkling green;Ranged in mysterious disarray,The Castle, menacing and austere,Looms through the lingering last of day;And in the silver dusk you hear,Reverberated from crag and scar,Bold bugles blowing points of war.
Words in this poem
- ahead adv.
- In or to the front; in advance; onward. [Pref. a- + head.]
- spired a.
- Having a spire; being in the form of a spire; as, a spired steeple. Mason.
- domed a.
- Furnished with a dome; shaped like a dome.
- turreted a.
- Furnished with a turret or turrets; specifically (Zoöl.), having the whorls somewhat flattened on the upper side and often ornamented by spines or tubercles; -- said of certain spiral shells.
- darkling a.
- Becoming dark or gloomy; frowing.
- disarray v. t.
- To throw into disorder; to break the array of. [Pref. dis- + array, v.: cf. OF. desarroyer, desarreier.]
- crag n.
- The neck or throat [A form of craw: cf. D. kraag neck, collar, G. kragen. See Craw.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To M. M. M‘B 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, To M. M. M‘B, in Poems (1898), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1568, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/henley-poems/to-m-m-m-b.html, id L12375.
Form and metre
To M. M. M‘B is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 7% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 ABABCDCDEFEF-- gloomA · seatB · bloomA · streetB · aheadC · leanD · turretedC · greenD · disarrayE · austereF · dayE · hearF · scar · war
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 |
|---|---|---|
| ABOVE the Crags that fade and gloom | 8 | ········ |
| Starts the bare knee of Arthur’s Seat; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Ridged high against the evening bloom, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The Old Town rises, street on street; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| With lamps bejewelled, straight ahead, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Like rampired walls the houses lean, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| All spired and domed and turreted, | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| Sheer to the valley’s darkling green; | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Ranged in mysterious disarray, | 8 | ··˘/˘·˘/ |
| The Castle, menacing and austere, | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| Looms through the lingering last of day; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And in the silver dusk you hear, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Reverberated from crag and scar, | 9 | ˘/˘·˘···· |
| Bold bugles blowing points of war. | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
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.