Evening
The evening closes in,As down this last long laneI plod; there patter roundFirst heavy drops of rain.
Feet ache, legs ache, but nowStep quickens as I thinkOf mounds of bread and cheeseAnd something hot to drink.
Words in this poem
- plod v. i.
- To travel slowly but steadily; to trudge. [Gf. Gael. plod a clod, a pool; also, to strike or pelt with a clod or clods.]
- patter v. i.
- To strike with a quick succession of slight, sharp sounds; as, pattering rain or hail; pattering feet. [Freq. of pat to strike gently.]
- ache n.
- A name given to several species of plants; as, smallage, wild celery, parsley. Holland. [F. ache, L. apium parsley.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Evening is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems - First Series, Project Gutenberg ebook #37860; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Collings Squire, Evening, in Poems: First Series (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #37860, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/squire-poems/evening.html, id L23146.
Form and metre
Evening is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 AA-A inA · laneA · round · rainA
- 2 -A-A now · thinkA · cheese · drinkA
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The evening closes in, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| As down this last long lane | 6 | ······ |
| I plod; there patter round | 6 | ···/˘· |
| First heavy drops of rain. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Feet ache, legs ache, but now | 6 | ······ |
| Step quickens as I think | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Of mounds of bread and cheese | 6 | ······ |
| And something hot to drink. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
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.