A Dark Day
The gloom that breathes upon me with these airsIs like the drops which strike the traveller's browWho knows not, darkling, if they bring him nowFresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears.Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares,Or hath but memory of the day whose ploughSowed hunger once,--the night at length when thou,O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers?
How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth,Along the hedgerows of this journey shed,Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe!Even as the thistledown from pathsides deadGleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth,Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed.
Words in this poem
- darkling a.
- Becoming dark or gloomy; frowing.
- didst
- , the 2d pers. sing. imp. of Do.
- soothe v. t.
- To assent to as true. Testament of Love. [Originally, to assent to as true; OE. so to verify, AS. ges to prove the truth of, to bear witness. See Sooth, a.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Dark Day is in the public domain. This text is taken from The House of Life, Project Gutenberg ebook #3692; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Dante Gabriel Rossetti, A Dark Day, in The House of Life (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3692, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rossetti-house-of-life/a-dark-day.html, id L20985.
Form and metre
A Dark Day is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
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 ABBA-BBA airsA · browB · nowB · bearsA · tares · ploughB · thouB · prayersA
- 2 ABAB-B smoothA · shedB · sootheA · deadB · youth · bedB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The gloom that breathes upon me with these airs | 10 | ·········· |
| Is like the drops which strike the traveller's brow | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Who knows not, darkling, if they bring him now | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Fresh storm, or be old rain the covert bears. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Ah! bodes this hour some harvest of new tares, | 10 | ···/·/˘··· |
| Or hath but memory of the day whose plough | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Sowed hunger once,--the night at length when thou, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| O prayer found vain, didst fall from out my prayers? | 10 | ·········· |
| How prickly were the growths which yet how smooth, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Along the hedgerows of this journey shed, | 11 | ˘/······/˘· |
| Lie by Time's grace till night and sleep may soothe! | 10 | ·········· |
| Even as the thistledown from pathsides dead | 10 | /········· |
| Gleaned by a girl in autumns of her youth, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Which one new year makes soft her marriage-bed. | 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.