Hero's Lamp
That lamp thou fill'st in Eros name to-night,O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs takeTo-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sakeTo Anteros its fireless lip shall plight.Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first lightOn ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break;While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake,Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte.
That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrineShall stand unlit (for so the gods decree)Till some one man the happy issue seeOf a life's love, and bid its flame to shine:Which still may rest unfir'd; for, theirs or thine,O brother, what brought love to them or thee?
Words in this poem
- eros n.
- Love; the god of love; -- by earlier writers represented as one of the first and creative gods, by later writers as the son of Aphrodite, equivalent to the Latin god Cupid.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- fireless a.
- Destitute of fire.
- plight v. t.
- To weave; to braid; to fold; to plait. [OE. pliten; probably through Old French, fr. LL. plectare, L. plectere. See Plait, Ply.]
- waft v. t.
- To give notice to by waving something; to wave the hand to; to beckon. [Prob. originally imp. & p. p. of wave, v. t. See Wave to waver.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Hero's Lamp 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, Hero's Lamp, in The House of Life (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3692, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rossetti-house-of-life/hero-s-lamp.html, id L21004.
Form and metre
Hero's Lamp is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
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 ABBAABBA nightA · takeB · sakeB · plightA · lightA · breakB · lakeB · neophyteA
- 2 ABBAAB shrineA · decreeB · seeB · shineA · thineA · theeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| That lamp thou fill'st in Eros name to-night, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| O Hero, shall the Sestian augurs take | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| To-morrow, and for drowned Leander's sake | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| To Anteros its fireless lip shall plight. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Aye, waft the unspoken vow: yet dawn's first light | 11 | ···˘/˘····· |
| On ebbing storm and life twice ebb'd must break; | 11 | ·/˘····/˘·· |
| While 'neath no sunrise, by the Avernian Lake, | 11 | ···/······· |
| Lo where Love walks, Death's pallid neophyte. | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| That lamp within Anteros' shadowy shrine | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Shall stand unlit (for so the gods decree) | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Till some one man the happy issue see | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Of a life's love, and bid its flame to shine: | 10 | ·········· |
| Which still may rest unfir'd; for, theirs or thine, | 10 | ·········· |
| O brother, what brought love to them or thee? | 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.