The Mirror
Between the woods the afternoonIs fallen in a golden swoon.The sun looks down from quiet skiesTo where a quiet water lies,And silent trees stoop down to trees.And there I saw a white swan makeAnother white swan in the lake;And, breast to breast, both motionless,They waited for the wind’s caress . . .And all the water was at ease.
Words in this poem
- afternoon n.
- The part of the day which follows noon, between noon and evening.
- caress n.
- An act of endearment; any act or expression of affection; an embracing, or touching, with tenderness. [F. caresse, It. carezza, LL. caritia dearness, fr. L. carus dear. See Charity.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Mirror is in the public domain. This text is taken from When We Were Very Young, Project Gutenberg ebook #70271; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: A. A. Milne, The Mirror, in When We Were Very Young (1924), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70271, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/milne-when-we-were-very-young/the-mirror.html, id L27208.
Form and metre
The Mirror is 10 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes AABBCDDEEC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
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 AABBCDDEEC afternoonA · swoonA · skiesB · liesB · treesC · makeD · lakeD · motionlessE · caressE · easeC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Between the woods the afternoon | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Is fallen in a golden swoon. | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| The sun looks down from quiet skies | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| To where a quiet water lies, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| And silent trees stoop down to trees. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| And there I saw a white swan make | 8 | ········ |
| Another white swan in the lake; | 8 | ˘/˘····· |
| And, breast to breast, both motionless, | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| They waited for the wind’s caress . . . | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| And all the water was at ease. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
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.