With the Night
O doubts, dull passions, and base fears,That harassed and oppressed the day,Ye poor remorses and vain tears,That shook this house of clay:
All heaven to the western barsIs glittering with the darker dawn;Here with the earth, the night, the stars,Ye have no place: begone!
Words in this poem
- shook v. t.
- To pack, as staves, in a shook.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
With the Night is in the public domain. This text is taken from Lyrics of Earth, Project Gutenberg ebook #12664; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Archibald Lampman, With the Night, in Lyrics of Earth (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12664, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lampman-lyrics/with-the-night.html, id L11097.
Form and metre
With the Night is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.5 syllables. 12% 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 ABAB fearsA · dayB · tearsA · clayB
- 2 ABAB barsA · dawnB · starsA · begoneB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O doubts, dull passions, and base fears, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| That harassed and oppressed the day, | 8 | ·˘/·˘/·· |
| Ye poor remorses and vain tears, | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| That shook this house of clay: | 6 | ······ |
| All heaven to the western bars | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Is glittering with the darker dawn; | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Here with the earth, the night, the stars, | 8 | ········ |
| Ye have no place: begone! | 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.