Abide with Me
Abide with me! fast falls the eventide;The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide!When other helpers fail, and comforts flee,Help of the helpless, O abide with me.
Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away;Change and decay in all around I see:O Thou who changest not, abide with me!
Words in this poem
- eventide n.
- The time of evening; evening. [AS. æfentid. See Tide.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Abide with Me is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems Every Child Should Know The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library, Project Gutenberg ebook #16436; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Mary E. Burt, Abide with Me, in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/abide-with-me.html, id L25279.
Form and metre
Abide with Me is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. 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 AABB eventideA · abideA · fleeB · meB
- 2 AABB dayA · awayA · seeB · meB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Abide with me! fast falls the eventide; | 10 | ˘/·····/˘˘ |
| The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide! | 10 | ·/˘/˘···˘/ |
| When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Help of the helpless, O abide with me. | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
| Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day; | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Earth’s joys grow dim, its glories pass away; | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| Change and decay in all around I see: | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| O Thou who changest not, abide with me! | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
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.