September
Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden daysGleaned by the year in autumn's harvest ways,With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember,Some crimson poppy of a late delightAtoning in its splendor for the flightOf summer blooms and joys—This is September.
Words in this poem
- ember n.
- A lighted coal, smoldering amid ashes; -- used chiefly in the plural, to signify mingled coals and ashes; the smoldering remains of a fire. [OE. emmeres, emeres, AS. ; akin to Icel. eimyrja, Dan. emmer, MHG. eimere; cf. Icel. eimr vapor, smoke.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
September is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Watchman and Other Poems (New York: Frederick A. Stokes Company, 1917; Toronto: McClelland, Goodchild and Stewart, 1916), Internet Archive; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: L. M. Montgomery, September, in The Watchman and Other Poems (1916), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/montgomery-watchman/september.html, id L29396.
Form and metre
September is 7 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in iambic 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.
- 1 AABCC-B daysA · waysA · emberB · delightC · flightC · joys · septemberB
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Lo! a ripe sheaf of many golden days | 9 | ·····//˘· |
| Gleaned by the year in autumn's harvest ways, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| With here and there, blood-tinted as an ember, | 11 | ·····/˘··/˘ |
| Some crimson poppy of a late delight | 10 | ·/˘/˘···˘/ |
| Atoning in its splendor for the flight | 10 | ˘/˘··/˘··· |
| Of summer blooms and joys— | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| This is September. | 5 | ··˘/˘ |
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.