By Morning Twilight
NIGHT, like a dying mother,Eyes her young offspring, Day.The birds are dreamily piping.And O, my love, my darling!The night is life ebb’d away:Away beyond our reach!A sea that has cast us pale on the beach;Weeds with the weeds and the pebblesThat hear the lone tamarisk rooted in sandSwayWith the song of the sea to the land.
Words in this poem
- dreamily adv.
- As if in a dream; softly; slowly; languidly.
- piping a.
- Playing on a musical pipe. [From Pipe, v.]
- lone n.
- A lane. See Loanin.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
By Morning Twilight is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems — Volume 1, Project Gutenberg ebook #1381; 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 Meredith, By Morning Twilight, in Modern Love, and Other Poems (1851–1862), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1381, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/meredith-poems/by-morning-twilight.html, id L26196.
Form and metre
By Morning Twilight is 11 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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 -A--ABB-CAC mother · dayA · piping · darling · awayA · reachB · beachB · pebbles · sandC · swayA · landC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| NIGHT, like a dying mother, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Eyes her young offspring, Day. | 6 | ···/·· |
| The birds are dreamily piping. | 8 | ···/˘˘/˘ |
| And O, my love, my darling! | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| The night is life ebb’d away: | 8 | ····/˘˘/ |
| Away beyond our reach! | 7 | ˘/··/˘· |
| A sea that has cast us pale on the beach; | 10 | ·········· |
| Weeds with the weeds and the pebbles | 8 | ······/˘ |
| That hear the lone tamarisk rooted in sand | 10 | ····/˘/˘·· |
| Sway | 1 | · |
| With the song of the sea to the land. | 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.