Analysis of Evening In Summer

James Thomson 1700 (Port Glasgow) – 1748 (London)



Confess'd from yonder slow-extinguish'd clouds,
All ether softening, sober Evening takes
Her wonted station in the middle air;
She sends on earth; then that of deeper dye
Steals soft behind; and then a deeper still,
In circle following circle, gathers round,
To close the face of things. A fresher gale
Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream,
Sweeping with shadowy gust the fields of corn;
While the quail clamours for his running mate.
Wide o'er the thistly lawn, as swells the breeze,
A whitening shower of vegetable down
Amusive floats. The kind impartial care
Of Nature nought disdains: thoughtful to feed
Her lowest songs, and clothe the coming year,
From field to field the feather'd seed she wings.
Among the crooked lanes, on every hedge,
The glowworm lights his gem; and through the dark
A moving radiance twinkles. Evening yields
The world to Night; not in her winter robe
Of massy Stygian woof, but loose array'd
In mantle dun. A faint erroneous ray,
Glanced from th' imperfect surfaces of things,
Flings half an image on the straining eye;
While wavering woods, and villages, and streams,
And rocks, and mountain tops, that long retain'd
Th' ascending gleam, are all one swimming scene,
Uncertain if beheld.


Scheme ABCDEFGHIJKLCMNOPQRSTUODVWXF
Poetic Form
Metre 0111010101 11010010101 011000101 1111111101 1101010101 01010010101 1101110101 0111010101 10110010111 101111101 1100111101 01001011001 11010101 1101011011 0101010101 1111010111 01010111001 011110101 01010010101 0111100101 1110011101 01010101001 111101010011 1111010101 11001010001 0101011101 110101111101 01011
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 1,207
Words 208
Sentences 8
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 28
Lines Amount 28
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 7
Letters per stanza (avg) 973
Words per stanza (avg) 206
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:04 min read
102

James Thomson

James Thomson, who wrote under the pseudonym Bysshe Vanolis, was a Scottish Victorian-era poet famous primarily for the long poem The City of Dreadful Night, an expression of bleak pessimism in a dehumanized, uncaring urban environment. more…

All James Thomson poems | James Thomson Books

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