The Bridal
Last night a pale young Moon was wedUnto the amorous, eager Sea;Her maiden veil of mist she woreHis kingly purple vesture, he.
With her a bridal train of starsWalked sisterly through shadows dim,And, master minstrel of the world,The great Wind sang the marriage hymn.
Thus came she down the silent skyUnto the Sea her faith to plight,And the grave priest who wedded themWas ancient, sombre-mantled Night.
Words in this poem
- plight v. t.
- To weave; to braid; to fold; to plait. [OE. pliten; probably through Old French, fr. LL. plectare, L. plectere. See Plait, Ply.]
- wedded a.
- Joined in wedlock; married.
- sombre n.
- Gloom; obscurity; duskiness; somberness.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Bridal 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, The Bridal, in The Watchman and Other Poems (1916), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/montgomery-watchman/the-bridal.html, id L29376.
Form and metre
The Bridal is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
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-A wed · seaA · wore · heA
- 2 -A-A stars · dimA · world · hymnA
- 3 -A-A sky · plightA · them · nightA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Last night a pale young Moon was wed | 8 | ········ |
| Unto the amorous, eager Sea; | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Her maiden veil of mist she wore | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| His kingly purple vesture, he. | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| With her a bridal train of stars | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Walked sisterly through shadows dim, | 8 | ·/˘˘·/·· |
| And, master minstrel of the world, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| The great Wind sang the marriage hymn. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Thus came she down the silent sky | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Unto the Sea her faith to plight, | 8 | ········ |
| And the grave priest who wedded them | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Was ancient, sombre-mantled Night. | 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.