Summer Stillness
The stars are golden instants in the deepFlawless expanse of night: the moon is set:The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleepSeeming so motionless that I forgetThe hollow booming bridges, where it slides,Dark with the sad looks that it bears along,Towards a sea whose unreturning tidesRavish the sighted ships and the sailors' song.
Words in this poem
- flawless a.
- Free from flaws. Boyle.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Summer Stillness is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Defeat of Youth, and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #24364; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Aldous Huxley, Summer Stillness, in The Defeat of Youth, and Other Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #24364, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/huxley-defeat-of-youth/summer-stillness.html, id L22015.
Form and metre
Summer Stillness is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCDCD. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
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 ABABCDCD deepA · setB · sleepA · forgetB · slidesC · alongD · tidesC · songD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The stars are golden instants in the deep | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Flawless expanse of night: the moon is set: | 10 | /˘˘/······ |
| The river sleeps, entranced, a smooth cool sleep | 10 | ·/˘·˘/···· |
| Seeming so motionless that I forget | 10 | /˘·/˘˘··˘/ |
| The hollow booming bridges, where it slides, | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘··· |
| Dark with the sad looks that it bears along, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Towards a sea whose unreturning tides | 10 | ·········· |
| Ravish the sighted ships and the sailors' song. | 11 | /˘·/˘···/˘· |
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.