Laurel · Edwin Arlington Robinson · The Children of the Night

The House on the Hill

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) · 1897

iambic trimeter · ABA · 19 lines · from The Children of the Night

They are all gone away,The House is shut and still,There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and grayThe winds blow bleak and shrill:They are all gone away.

Nor is there one to-dayTo speak them good or ill:There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we strayAround that sunken sill?They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-playFor them is wasted skill:There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decayIn the House on the Hill:They are all gone away,There is nothing more to say.

About this text

The House on the Hill is in the public domain. This text is taken from Children of the Night, Project Gutenberg ebook #313; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.

Cite as: Edwin Arlington Robinson, The House on the Hill, in The Children of the Night (1897), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #313, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/robinson-children-of-night/the-house-on-the-hill.html, id L07986.

Form and metre

The House on the Hill is 19 lines in 6 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is ABA, complete in 5 of its 6 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.3 syllables. 26% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.

See other poems in iambic trimeter.

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 ABA away^A · still^B · say^A
2 ABA gray^A · shrill^B · away^A
3 ABA day^A · ill^B · say^A
4 ABA stray^A · sill^B · away^A
5 ABA play^A · skill^B · say^A
6 ABAA decay^A · hill^B · away^A · say^A

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 trimeter. How this is done.

Line	Syl.	Stress
They are all gone away,	6	····˘/
The House is shut and still,	6	······
There is nothing more to say.	7	··/˘···
Through broken walls and gray	6	·/˘···
The winds blow bleak and shrill:	6	······
They are all gone away.	6	····˘/
Nor is there one to-day	6	······
To speak them good or ill:	6	······
There is nothing more to say.	7	··/˘···
Why is it then we stray	6	······
Around that sunken sill?	6	···/˘·
They are all gone away,	6	····˘/
And our poor fancy-play	7	·/˘·/˘·
For them is wasted skill:	6	···/˘·
There is nothing more to say.	7	··/˘···
There is ruin and decay	7	··/˘·˘/
In the House on the Hill:	6	······
They are all gone away,	6	····˘/
There is nothing more to say.	7	··/˘···

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.

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