The Watches Of The Night Poem Rhyme Scheme and Analysis
Rhyme Scheme: AAABBBA AAAAAAAA AAAAACAA AAADEFA| O the waiting in the watches of the night | A |
| In the darkness desolation and contrition and affright | A |
| The awful hush that holds us shut away from all delight | A |
| The ever weary memory that ever weary goes | B |
| Recounting ever over every aching loss it knows | B |
| The ever weary eyelids gasping ever for repose | B |
| In the dreary weary watches of the night | A |
| - | |
| Dark stifling dark the watches of the night | A |
| With tingling nerves at tension how the blackness flashes white | A |
| With spectral visitations smitten past the inner sight | A |
| What shuddering sense of wrongs we've wrought | A |
| that may not be redressed | A |
| Of tears we did not brush away of lips we left unpressed | A |
| And hands that we let fall with all their loyalty unguessed | A |
| Ah the empty empty watches of the night | A |
| - | |
| What solace in the watches of the night | A |
| What frailest staff of hope to stay what faintest shaft of light | A |
| Do we dream and dare believe it that by never weight of right | A |
| Of our own poor weak deservings we shall win the dawn at last | A |
| Our famished souls find freedom from this penance for the past | A |
| In a faith that leaps and lightens from the gloom | C |
| that flees aghast | A |
| Shall we survive the watches of the night | A |
| - | |
| One leads us through the watches of the night | A |
| By the ceaseless intercession of our loved ones lost to sight | A |
| He is with us through all trials in His mercy and His might | A |
| With our mothers there about Him all our sorrow disappears | D |
| Till the silence of our sobbing is the prayer the Master hears | E |
| And His hand is laid upon us with the tenderness of tears | F |
| In the waning of the watches of the night | A |
James Whitcomb Riley
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About The Watches Of The Night
The Watches Of The Night is a poem by James Whitcomb Riley. This page includes the poem text, poet information, related topics, comments, and similar poems.
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