Eight O'Clock
Supper comes at five o'clock,At six, the evening star,My lover comes at eight o'clock--But eight o'clock is far.
How could I bear my pain all dayUnless I watched to seeThe clock-hands laboring to bringEight o'clock to me.
Words in this poem
- laboring a.
- That labors; performing labor; esp., performing coarse, heavy work, not requiring skill also, set apart for labor; as, laboring days.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Eight O'Clock is in the public domain. This text is taken from Flame and Shadow, Project Gutenberg ebook #591; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sara Teasdale, Eight O'Clock, in Flame and Shadow (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #591, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/teasdale-flame-shadow/eight-o-clock.html, id L16977.
Form and metre
Eight O'Clock is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.9 syllables. 38% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in common measure.
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 ABAB o'clockA · starB · o'clockA · farB
- 2 -A-A day · seeA · bring · meA
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Supper comes at five o'clock, | 7 | /˘···˘/ |
| At six, the evening star, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| My lover comes at eight o'clock-- | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| But eight o'clock is far. | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| How could I bear my pain all day | 8 | ········ |
| Unless I watched to see | 7 | ····˘·· |
| The clock-hands laboring to bring | 8 | ···/˘˘·· |
| Eight o'clock to me. | 5 | ·˘/·· |
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.