Travellers' Song
Bands of dark and bands of lightLie athwart the homeward way;Now we cross a belt of Night,Now a strip of shining Day!
Now it is a month of June,Now December's shivering hour;Now rides high loved memories' Moon,Now the Dark is dense with power!
Summers, winters, days, and nights,Moons, and clouds, they come and go;Joys and sorrows, pains, delights,Hope and fear, and yes and no.
All is well: come, girls and boys,Not a weary mile is vain!Hark--dim laughter's radiant noise!See the windows through the rain!
Words in this poem
- homeward a.
- Being in the direction of home; as, the homeward way.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Travellers' Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from The poetical works of George MacDonald in two volumes — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #9984; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: George MacDonald, Travellers' Song, in A Microcosm in Terza Rima, and Other Poems (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #9984, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/macdonald-poems/travellers-song.html, id L22303.
Form and metre
Travellers' Song is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in trochaic 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 lightA · wayB · nightA · dayB
- 2 ABAB juneA · hourB · moonA · powerB
- 3 ABAB nightsA · goB · delightsA · noB
- 4 ABAB boysA · vainB · noiseA · rainB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Bands of dark and bands of light | 7 | ······· |
| Lie athwart the homeward way; | 7 | ·˘/·/˘· |
| Now we cross a belt of Night, | 7 | ······· |
| Now a strip of shining Day! | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Now it is a month of June, | 7 | ······· |
| Now December's shivering hour; | 7 | ·˘/˘/˘/ |
| Now rides high loved memories' Moon, | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| Now the Dark is dense with power! | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Summers, winters, days, and nights, | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| Moons, and clouds, they come and go; | 7 | ······· |
| Joys and sorrows, pains, delights, | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| Hope and fear, and yes and no. | 7 | ······· |
| All is well: come, girls and boys, | 7 | ······· |
| Not a weary mile is vain! | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Hark--dim laughter's radiant noise! | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| See the windows through the rain! | 7 | ··/˘··· |
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.