The Bridge
I HAVE come a long way to-day:On a strange bridge alone,Remembering friends, old friends,I rest, without smile or moan,As they remember me without smile or moan.
All are behind, the kindAnd the unkind too, no moreTo-night than a dream. The streamRuns softly yet drowns the Past,The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and thePast.
No traveller has rest more blestThan this moment brief betweenTwo lives, when the Night's first lightsAnd shades hide what has never been,Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or havebeen.
Words in this poem
- unkind a.
- Having no race or kindred; childless. [See Kin kindred.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Bridge is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #22423; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edward Thomas, The Bridge, in Poems (1917), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22423, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/thomas-edward-poems/the-bridge.html, id L08163.
Form and metre
The Bridge is 17 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.2 syllables. 47% 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 -A-AA day · aloneA · friends · moanA · moanA
- 2 ---A-A kind · more · stream · pastA · the · pastA
- 3 ---A-A blest · between · lights · beenA · have · beenA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I HAVE come a long way to-day: | 8 | ········ |
| On a strange bridge alone, | 6 | ····˘/ |
| Remembering friends, old friends, | 7 | ˘/˘˘··· |
| I rest, without smile or moan, | 7 | ······· |
| As they remember me without smile or moan. | 11 | ··˘/˘······ |
| All are behind, the kind | 6 | ······ |
| And the unkind too, no more | 7 | ··˘/··· |
| To-night than a dream. The stream | 7 | ······· |
| Runs softly yet drowns the Past, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| The dark-lit stream has drowned the Future and the | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
| Past. | 1 | · |
| No traveller has rest more blest | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| Than this moment brief between | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Two lives, when the Night's first lights | 7 | ······· |
| And shades hide what has never been, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Things goodlier, lovelier, dearer, than will be or have | 13 | ······/˘····· |
| been. | 1 | · |
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.