At Night
Crazed shadows, from no golden bodyThat I can see, embrace me warm;All is purple and closedRound by night’s arm.
A brilliance wings from dark-lit voices,Wild lost voices of shadows white:See the long houses leanTo the weird flight.
Star-amorous things that wake at sleep-time(Because the sun spreads wide like a treeWith no good fruit for them)Thrill secrecy.
Pale horses ride before the morning,The secret roots of the sun to tread,With hoofs shod with venomAnd ageless dread;
To breathe on burning emerald grassesAnd opalescent dews of the day,And poison at the coreWhat smiles may stray.
Words in this poem
- ageless a.
- Without old age limits of duration; as, fountains of ageless youth.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
At Night is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems by Isaac Rosenberg, Project Gutenberg ebook #66889; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Isaac Rosenberg, At Night, in Poems (1922), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66889, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rosenberg-poems/at-night.html, id L02531.
Form and metre
At Night is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.9 syllables. 6 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 40% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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.
- 2 -A-A voices · whiteA · lean · flightA
- 4 -A-A morning · treadA · venom · dreadA
- 5 -A-A grasses · dayA · core · strayA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Crazed shadows, from no golden body | 9 | ·/···/˘/˘ |
| That I can see, embrace me warm; | 8 | ····˘/·· |
| All is purple and closed | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| Round by night’s arm. | 4 | ···· |
| A brilliance wings from dark-lit voices, | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| Wild lost voices of shadows white: | 8 | ··/˘·/·· |
| See the long houses lean | 6 | ···/˘· |
| To the weird flight. | 4 | ···· |
| Star-amorous things that wake at sleep-time | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| (Because the sun spreads wide like a tree | 9 | ········· |
| With no good fruit for them) | 6 | ······ |
| Thrill secrecy. | 4 | ·/˘˘ |
| Pale horses ride before the morning, | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| The secret roots of the sun to tread, | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| With hoofs shod with venom | 6 | ····/˘ |
| And ageless dread; | 4 | ·/˘· |
| To breathe on burning emerald grasses | 9 | ···/˘/˘/˘ |
| And opalescent dews of the day, | 9 | ········· |
| And poison at the core | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| What smiles may stray. | 4 | ···· |
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.