In The Placid Summer Midnight
William Ernest Henley 1849 (Gloucester) – 1903 (Woking)
In the placid summer midnight,
Under the drowsy sky,
I seem to hear in the stillness
The moths go glimmering by.
One by one from the windows
The lights have all been sped.
Never a blind looks conscious -
The street is asleep in bed!
But I come where a living casement
Laughs luminous and wide;
I hear the song of a piano
Break in a sparkling tide;
And I feel, in the waltz that frolics
And warbles swift and clear,
A sudden sense of shelter
And friendliness and cheer . . .
A sense of tinkling glasses,
Of love and laughter and light -
The piano stops, and the window
Stares blank out into the night.
The blind goes out, and I wander
To the old, unfriendly sea,
The lonelier for the memory
That walks like a ghost with me.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 45 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | ABCB XDCD AEFE CGHG XAFA HIII |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 707 |
Words | 140 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
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"In The Placid Summer Midnight" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/40488/in-the-placid-summer-midnight>.
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