Sunset
I saw the day lean o'er the world's sharp edgeAnd peer into night's chasm, dark and damp;High in his hand he held a blazing lamp,Then dropped it and plunged headlong down the ledge.
With lurid splendor that swift paled to gray,I saw the dim skies suddenly flush bright.'Twas but the expiring glory of the lightFlung from the hand of the adventurous day.
Words in this poem
- lurid a.
- Pale yellow; ghastly pale; wan; gloomy; dismal. [L. luridus.]
- expiring a.
- Breathing out air from the lungs; emitting fluid or volatile matter; exhaling; breathing the last breath; dying; ending; terminating.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Sunset is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of Passion, Project Gutenberg ebook #16776; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Sunset, in Poems of Passion (1883), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16776, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/wilcox-passion/sunset.html, id L22214.
Form and metre
Sunset is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABBA. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
See 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 ABBA edgeA · dampB · lampB · ledgeA
- 2 ABBA grayA · brightB · lightB · dayA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I saw the day lean o'er the world's sharp edge | 10 | ·········· |
| And peer into night's chasm, dark and damp; | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| High in his hand he held a blazing lamp, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Then dropped it and plunged headlong down the ledge. | 10 | ·····/···· |
| With lurid splendor that swift paled to gray, | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| I saw the dim skies suddenly flush bright. | 10 | ·····/˘˘·· |
| 'Twas but the expiring glory of the light | 11 | ···˘/˘/˘··· |
| Flung from the hand of the adventurous day. | 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.