By Day Thou Art The Legend and The Dream
By day Thou are the Legend and the DreamThat like a whisper floats about all men,The deep and brooding stillnesses which seem,After the hour has struck, to close again.
And when the day with drowsy gesture bendsAnd sinks to sleep beneath the evening skies,As from each roof a tower of smoke ascends--So does Thy Realm, my God, around me rise.
About this text
By Day Thou Art The Legend and The Dream is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, translated by Jessie Lemont, with an introduction by H.T. (New York: Tobias A. Wright, 1918), Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, the Jessie Lemont translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Rainer Maria Rilke, By Day Thou Art The Legend and The Dream, in Poems (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #38594, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rilke-poems-lemont/by-day-thou-art.html, id L27767.
Form and metre
By Day Thou Art The Legend and The Dream is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
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 ABAB dreamA · menB · seemA · againB
- 2 ABAB bendsA · skiesB · ascendsA · riseB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| By day Thou are the Legend and the Dream | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| That like a whisper floats about all men, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| The deep and brooding stillnesses which seem, | 10 | ···/˘/˘˘·· |
| After the hour has struck, to close again. | 10 | ···/····˘/ |
| And when the day with drowsy gesture bends | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| And sinks to sleep beneath the evening skies, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| As from each roof a tower of smoke ascends-- | 10 | ·····/··˘/ |
| So does Thy Realm, my God, around me rise. | 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.