Hope Overtaken
I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey,So far I viewed thee. Now the space betweenIs passed at length; and garmented in greenEven as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day.Ah God! and but for lingering dull dismay,On all that road our footsteps erst had beenEven thus commingled, and our shadows seenBlent on the hedgerows and the water-way.
O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love,No eyes but hers,--O Love and Hope the same!--Lean close to me, for now the sinking sunThat warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above.O hers thy voice and very hers thy name!Alas, cling round me, for the day is done!
Words in this poem
- garmented p. a.
- Having on a garment; attired; enveloped, as with a garment.
- yore adv.
- In time long past; in old time; long since. [OE. , yare, , AS. geára;akin to geár a year, E. year. Year.]
- blent p. p.
- Blinded. Also (Chaucer), 3d sing. pres. Blindeth.
- scarce a.
- Not plentiful or abundant; in small quantity in proportion to the demand; not easily to be procured; rare; uncommon. [OE. scars, OF. escars, eschars, LL. scarpsus, for L. excerptus, p. p. of excerpere to pick out, and hence to contract, to shorten; ex (see Ex-) + carpere. See C]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Hope Overtaken 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, Hope Overtaken, in The House of Life (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3692, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rossetti-house-of-life/hope-overtaken.html, id L20962.
Form and metre
Hope Overtaken is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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 ABBAA-BA greyA · betweenB · greenB · dayA · dismayA · been · seenB · wayA
- 2 ABCABC loveA · sameB · sunC · aboveA · nameB · doneC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I deemed thy garments, O my Hope, were grey, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| So far I viewed thee. Now the space between | 10 | ·········· |
| Is passed at length; and garmented in green | 10 | ·····/˘˘·· |
| Even as in days of yore thou stand'st to-day. | 10 | /········· |
| Ah God! and but for lingering dull dismay, | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| On all that road our footsteps erst had been | 10 | ····//···· |
| Even thus commingled, and our shadows seen | 10 | /·˘/˘·//·· |
| Blent on the hedgerows and the water-way. | 11 | ········/˘· |
| O Hope of mine whose eyes are living love, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| No eyes but hers,--O Love and Hope the same!-- | 10 | ·········· |
| Lean close to me, for now the sinking sun | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| That warmed our feet scarce gilds our hair above. | 10 | ··/···/··· |
| O hers thy voice and very hers thy name! | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Alas, cling round me, for the day is done! | 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.