The Hill Summit
This feast-day of the sun, his altar thereIn the broad west has blazed for vesper-song;And I have loitered in the vale too longAnd gaze now a belated worshipper.Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware,So journeying, of his face at intervalsTransfigured where the fringed horizon falls,--A fiery bush with coruscating hair.
And now that I have climbed and won this height,I must tread downward through the sloping shadeAnd travel the bewildered tracks till night.Yet for this hour I still may here be stayedAnd see the gold air and the silver fadeAnd the last bird fly into the last light.
Words in this poem
- vale n.
- A tract of low ground, or of land between hills; a valley. [OE. val, F. val, L. vallis; perhaps akin to Gr. Avalanche, Vail to lower, Valley.]
- belated a.
- Delayed beyond the usual time; too late; overtaken by night; benighted.
- stayed a.
- Staid; fixed; settled; sober; -- now written staid. See Staid.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Hill Summit 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, The Hill Summit, in The House of Life (1881), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #3692, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rossetti-house-of-life/the-hill-summit.html, id L20987.
Form and metre
The Hill Summit 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 ABB-ACCA thereA · songB · longB · worshipper · wareA · intervalsC · fallsC · hairA
- 2 ABABBA heightA · shadeB · nightA · stayedB · fadeB · lightA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| This feast-day of the sun, his altar there | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| In the broad west has blazed for vesper-song; | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And I have loitered in the vale too long | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| And gaze now a belated worshipper. | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
| Yet may I not forget that I was 'ware, | 10 | ····˘/···· |
| So journeying, of his face at intervals | 11 | ·/˘˘····/˘˘ |
| Transfigured where the fringed horizon falls,-- | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| A fiery bush with coruscating hair. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And now that I have climbed and won this height, | 10 | ·········· |
| I must tread downward through the sloping shade | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And travel the bewildered tracks till night. | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘··· |
| Yet for this hour I still may here be stayed | 10 | ···/······ |
| And see the gold air and the silver fade | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And the last bird fly into the last light. | 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.