Analysis of Good-Night

Edward Thomas 1878 (London Borough of Lambeth) – 1917 (Pas-de-Calais)



The skylarks are far behind that sang over the down;
I can hear no more those suburb nightingales;
Thrushes and blackbirds sing in the gardens of the town
In vain: the noise of man, beast, and machine prevails.

But the call of children in the unfamiliar streets
That echo with a familiar twilight echoing,
Sweet as the voice of nightingale or lark, completes
A magic of strange welcome, so that I seem a king

Among men, beast, machine, bird, child, and the ghost
That in the echo lives and with the echo dies.
The friendless town is friendly; homeless, I am not lost;
Though I know none of these doors, and meet but strangers' eyes.

Never again, perhaps, after to-morrow, shall
I see these homely streets, these church windows alight,
Not a man or woman or child among them all:
But it is All Friends' Night, a traveller's good-night.


Scheme ABAB BCBC XBXB XDXD
Poetic Form Quatrain 
Metre 011101111001 111111101 1001010010101 010111100101 101110000101 110100101100 110111001101 0101110111101 01110111001 100101010101 011110101111 1111111011101 100101101101 111101111001 101110110111 1111110111
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 827
Words 151
Sentences 5
Stanzas 4
Stanza Lengths 4, 4, 4, 4
Lines Amount 16
Letters per line (avg) 41
Words per line (avg) 9
Letters per stanza (avg) 163
Words per stanza (avg) 37
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

45 sec read
119

Edward Thomas

Philip Edward Thomas was an Anglo-Welsh poet and essayist. more…

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