The Rosy Hearth, the Lamplight's Narrow Beam
The rosy hearth, the lamplight's narrow beam,The meditation that is rather dream,With looks that lose themselves in cherished looks;The hour of steaming tea and banished books;The sweetness of the evening at an end,The dear fatigue, and right to rest attained,And worshipped expectation of the night,--Oh, all these things, in unrelenting flight,My dream pursues through all the vain delays,Impatient of the weeks, mad at the days!
Words in this poem
- unrelenting a.
- Not relenting; unyielding; rigid; hard; stern; cruel.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Rosy Hearth, the Lamplight's Narrow Beam is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #8426, the Gertrude Hall translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Paul Verlaine, The Rosy Hearth, the Lamplight's Narrow Beam, in Poems (1895), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8426, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/verlaine-poems/the-rosy-hearth-the-lamplight-s-narrow-beam.html, id L15489.
Form and metre
The Rosy Hearth, the Lamplight's Narrow Beam is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 AABB--CCDD beamA · dreamA · looksB · booksB · end · attained · nightC · flightC · delaysD · daysD
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The rosy hearth, the lamplight's narrow beam, | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| The meditation that is rather dream, | 10 | ··˘/˘··/˘· |
| With looks that lose themselves in cherished looks; | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| The hour of steaming tea and banished books; | 10 | ·/·/˘··/˘· |
| The sweetness of the evening at an end, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| The dear fatigue, and right to rest attained, | 10 | ··˘/····˘/ |
| And worshipped expectation of the night,-- | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘··· |
| Oh, all these things, in unrelenting flight, | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| My dream pursues through all the vain delays, | 10 | ··˘/····˘/ |
| Impatient of the weeks, mad at the days! | 10 | ˘/˘······· |
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.