Prologue: In Darkness
With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, whydo I lie awake,Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feelingmy heart's fierce acheThat beats one response to the brain's many questionings,and in solitude bears the weightOf all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and thesenseless pressure of fate?
Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that socertainly it recurs?In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it herethat a song first stirs?Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory,there will spring of a sudden, some time,Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, thethin-blown shape of a rhyme?
Words in this poem
- ache n.
- A name given to several species of plants; as, smallage, wild celery, parsley. Holland. [F. ache, L. apium parsley.]
- vigil n.
- Abstinence from sleep, whether at a time when sleep is customary or not; the act of keeping awake, or the state of being awake, or the state of being awake; sleeplessness; wakefulness; watch. [OE. vigile, L. vigilia, from vigil awake, watchful, probably akin to E. wake: cf. F. vigile. See Wake, v. i., and cf. Reveille, Surveillance, Vedette, Vegetable]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Prologue: In Darkness 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, Prologue: In Darkness, in Poems: First Series (1918), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #37860, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/squire-poems/prologue-in-darkness.html, id L23184.
Form and metre
Prologue: In Darkness is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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 -A-A-B-B why · awakeA · feeling · acheA · questionings · weightB · the · fateB
- 2 -A-A-B-B so · recursA · here · stirsA · memory · timeB · the · rhymeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| With my sleeping beloved huddled tranquil beside me, why | 14 | ··/˘˘//˘/˘·/·· |
| do I lie awake, | 5 | ···˘/ |
| Listening to the loud clock's hurry in the darkness, and feeling | 15 | /˘····/˘··/˘·/˘ |
| my heart's fierce ache | 4 | ···· |
| That beats one response to the brain's many questionings, | 11 | ···˘/···//˘ |
| and in solitude bears the weight | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Of all the world's evil and misery and frustration, and the | 14 | ····/·/˘·˘/˘·· |
| senseless pressure of fate? | 6 | /˘/˘·· |
| Is it season of ploughing and sowing, this long vigil, that so | 16 | ··/˘·/˘·/˘··/˘·· |
| certainly it recurs? | 6 | /˘˘·˘/ |
| In this unsought return of a pain that was ended, is it here | 16 | ····˘/·····/˘··· |
| that a song first stirs? | 5 | ····· |
| Can it be that from this, when to-night's gone from memory, | 13 | ···········/˘ |
| there will spring of a sudden, some time, | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| Like a silver lily breaking from black deadly waters, the | 15 | ··/˘/˘/˘··/˘/˘· |
| thin-blown shape of a rhyme? | 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.