Silent Noon
Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,--The finger-points look through the rosy blooms:Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass.All round our nest, far as the eye can pass,Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edgeWhere the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge.'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass.
Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-flyHangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky:So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above.Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower,This close-companioned inarticulate hourWhen twofold silence was the song of love.
Words in this poem
- deathless a.
- Not subject to death, destruction, or extinction; immortal; undying; imperishable; as, deathless beings; deathless fame.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Silent Noon 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, Silent Noon, in The House of Life (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3692, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rossetti-house-of-life/silent-noon.html, id L20939.
Form and metre
Silent Noon is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%).
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 ABBAACCA grassA · bloomsB · gloomsB · amassA · passA · edgeC · hedgeC · glassA
- 2 AABCCB flyA · skyA · aboveB · dowerC · hourC · loveB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Your hands lie open in the long fresh grass,-- | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| The finger-points look through the rosy blooms: | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Your eyes smile peace. The pasture gleams and glooms | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| 'Neath billowing skies that scatter and amass. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·˘/ |
| All round our nest, far as the eye can pass, | 10 | ··/······· |
| Are golden kingcup-fields with silver edge | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Where the cow-parsley skirts the hawthorn-hedge. | 10 | ···/˘··/·· |
| 'Tis visible silence, still as the hour-glass. | 10 | ·/˘/˘···/· |
| Deep in the sun-searched growths the dragon-fly | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Hangs like a blue thread loosened from the sky: | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| So this wing'd hour is dropt to us from above. | 11 | ···/······· |
| Oh! clasp we to our hearts, for deathless dower, | 10 | ····/··/˘· |
| This close-companioned inarticulate hour | 10 | ··˘/˘˘˘/˘/ |
| When twofold silence was the song of love. | 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.