When I'm Among a Blaze of Lights
When I'm among a blaze of lights,With tawdry music and cigarsAnd women dawdling through delights,And officers at cocktail bars,--Sometimes I think of garden nightsAnd elm trees nodding at the stars.
I dream of a small firelit roomWith yellow candles burning straight,And glowing pictures in the gloom,And kindly books that hold me late.Of things like these I love to thinkWhen I can never be alone:Then some one says, "Another drink?"--And turns my living heart to stone.
Words in this poem
- tawdry a.
- Bought at the festival of St. Audrey. [Said to be corrupted from Saint Audrey, or Auldrey, meaning Saint Ethelreda, implying therefore, originally, bought at the fair of St. Audrey, where laces and g]
- cocktail n.
- A beverage made of brandy, whisky, or gin, iced, flavored, and sweetened. [U. S.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
When I'm Among a Blaze of Lights is in the public domain. This text is taken from The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon, Project Gutenberg ebook #45199; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Siegfried Sassoon, When I'm Among a Blaze of Lights, in The War Poems (1919), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #45199, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sassoon-war-poems/when-i-m-among-a-blaze-of-lights.html, id L17260.
Form and metre
When I'm Among a Blaze of Lights is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.1 syllables. 29% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 ABABAB lightsA · cigarsB · delightsA · barsB · nightsA · starsB
- 2 ABABCDCD roomA · straightB · gloomA · lateB · thinkC · aloneD · drinkC · stoneD
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| When I'm among a blaze of lights, | 8 | ········ |
| With tawdry music and cigars | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| And women dawdling through delights, | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| And officers at cocktail bars,-- | 8 | ·/˘˘·/·· |
| Sometimes I think of garden nights | 8 | ˘/···/˘· |
| And elm trees nodding at the stars. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| I dream of a small firelit room | 9 | ········· |
| With yellow candles burning straight, | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| And glowing pictures in the gloom, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And kindly books that hold me late. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Of things like these I love to think | 8 | ········ |
| When I can never be alone: | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| Then some one says, "Another drink?"-- | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
| And turns my living heart to stone. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
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.