Analysis of The Voice And The Dusk

Duncan Campbell Scott 1862 (Ottawa) – 1947



THE slender moon and one pale star,
A rose leaf and a silver bee
From some god's garden blown afar,
Go down the gold deep tranquilly.

Within the south there rolls and grows
A mighty town with tower and spire,
From a cloud bastion masked with rose
The lightning flashes diamond fire.

The purple martin darts about
The purlieus of the iris fen;
The king-bird rushes up and out,
He screams and whirls and screams again.

A thrush is hidden in a maze
Of cedar buds and tamarac bloom,
He throws his rapid flexile phrase,
A flash of emeralds in the gloom.

A voice is singing from the hill
A happy love of long ago;
Ah! tender voice, be still, be still,
''Tis sometimes better not to know.'

The rapture from the amber height
Floats tremblingly along the plain,
Where in the reeds with fairy light
The lingering fireflies gleam again.

Buried in dingles more remote,
Or drifted from some ferny rise,
The swooning of the golden throat
Drops in the mellow dusk and dies.

A soft wind passes lightly drawn,
A wave leaps silverly and stirs
The rustling sedge, and then is gone
Down the black cavern in the firs.


Scheme AXAB CXCX DEDE FGFG BHBH IXIE JKJK LMLM
Poetic Form Quatrain  (63%)
Metre 01010111 01100101 11110101 110111 01011101 010111001 10110111 010101010 01010101 0110101 01110101 11010101 01110001 110101001 1111011 01110001 01110101 01011101 11011111 10110111 01010101 110101 10011101 010010101 1001101 1101111 01010101 10010101 01110101 011101 01010111 10110001
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,073
Words 204
Sentences 10
Stanzas 8
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 32
Letters per line (avg) 27
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 108
Words per stanza (avg) 25
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:01 min read
38

Duncan Campbell Scott

Duncan Campbell Scott was a Canadian bureaucrat, Canadian poet and prose writer. more…

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