Analysis of Sonnet to Twilight

Helen Maria Williams 1761 (London) – 1827



Meek Twilight! soften the declining day,
And bring the hour my pensive spirit loves;
When o'er the mountain slow descends the ray
That gives to silence and to night the groves.
Ah, let the happy court the morning still,
When, in her blooming loveliness arrayed,
She bids fresh beauty light the vale or hill,
And rapture warble in the vocal shade.
Sweet is the odour of the morning's flower,
And rich in melody her accents rise;
Yet dearer to my soul the shadowy hour
At which her blossoms close, her music dies:
For then, while languid Nature droops her head,
She wakes the tear 'tis luxury to shed.


Scheme ABACDEDEFGFGHH
Poetic Form
Metre 111000101 01010110101 11001010101 1111001101 1101010101 10010101 1111010111 0101000101 1101101010 0101000101 110111010010 1101010101 1111010101 1101110011
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 594
Words 110
Sentences 5
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 14
Lines Amount 14
Letters per line (avg) 34
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 472
Words per stanza (avg) 108
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 24, 2023

33 sec read
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Helen Maria Williams

Helen Maria Williams was a British novelist poet and translator of French-language works A religious dissenter she was a supporter of abolitionism and of the ideals of the French Revolution she was imprisoned in Paris during the Reign of Terror but nonetheless spent much of the rest of her life in France A controversial figure in her own time the young Williams was favorably portrayed in a 1787 poem by William Wordsworth but she was portrayed by other writers as irresponsibly politically radical and even as sexually wanton more…

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