Four by the Clock
"NAHANT, September 8, 1880,Four o'clock in the morning."
Four by the clock! and yet not day;But the great world rolls and wheels away,With its cities on land, and its ships at sea,Into the dawn that is to be!
Only the lamp in the anchored barkSends its glimmer across the dark,And the heavy breathing of the seaIs the only sound that comes to me.
Words in this poem
- anchored a.
- Held by an anchor; at anchor; held safely; as, an anchored bark; also, shaped like an anchor; forked; as, an anchored tongue.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Four by the Clock is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Project Gutenberg ebook #1365; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Four by the Clock, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/four-by-the-clock.html, id L17836.
Form and metre
Four by the Clock is 10 lines in 3 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is AABB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is trochaic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%). 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.4 syllables. 2 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 trochaic 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.
- 2 AABB dayA · awayA · seaB · beB
- 3 AABB barkA · darkA · seaB · meB
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 trochaic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| "NAHANT, September 8, 1880, | 5 | ··˘/˘ |
| Four o'clock in the morning." | 7 | ·˘/··/˘ |
| Four by the clock! and yet not day; | 8 | ········ |
| But the great world rolls and wheels away, | 9 | ·······˘/ |
| With its cities on land, and its ships at sea, | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| Into the dawn that is to be! | 8 | ········ |
| Only the lamp in the anchored bark | 10 | /˘····/˘˘· |
| Sends its glimmer across the dark, | 8 | ··/˘˘/·· |
| And the heavy breathing of the sea | 9 | ··/˘/˘··· |
| Is the only sound that comes to me. | 9 | ··/˘····· |
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.