The Quiet Rural Church
It was a humble church, with arches low,The church we entered there,Where many a weary soul since long agoHad past with plaint or prayer.
Mournful and still it was at day's decline,The day we entered there;As in a loveless heart, at the lone shrine,The fires extinguished were.
Scarcely was heard to float some gentlest sound,Scarcely some low breathed word,As in a forest fallen asleep, is foundJust one belated bird.
Words in this poem
- plaint n.
- Audible expression of sorrow; lamentation; complaint; hence, a mournful song; a lament. Chaucer."The Psalmist's mournful plaint." [OE. plainte, pleynte, F. plainte, fr. L. plangere, planctum (plancta, fem. p.p.), to beat, beat the breast, lament. Cf. Complain, Plague, Plangent.]
- loveless a.
- Void of love; void of tenderness or kindness. Milton. Shelton.
- lone n.
- A lane. See Loanin.
- belated a.
- Delayed beyond the usual time; too late; overtaken by night; benighted.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Quiet Rural Church is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, the various hands translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Victor Hugo, The Quiet Rural Church, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8775, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hugo-poems/the-quiet-rural-church.html, id L26868.
Form and metre
The Quiet Rural Church is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See 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 ABAB lowA · thereB · agoA · prayerB
- 2 A-A- declineA · there · shrineA · were
- 3 ABAB soundA · wordB · foundA · birdB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| It was a humble church, with arches low, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| The church we entered there, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Where many a weary soul since long ago | 10 | ·/·/˘···˘/ |
| Had past with plaint or prayer. | 6 | ······ |
| Mournful and still it was at day's decline, | 10 | /˘······˘/ |
| The day we entered there; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| As in a loveless heart, at the lone shrine, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| The fires extinguished were. | 7 | ·/˘˘/˘· |
| Scarcely was heard to float some gentlest sound, | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| Scarcely some low breathed word, | 6 | /˘···· |
| As in a forest fallen asleep, is found | 11 | ···/˘/˘˘/·· |
| Just one belated bird. | 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.