Surname 2
Morn came and went --- and came, and brought no day,
And men forgot their passions in the dread (6-7)
The irregular rhyme scheme does not assist in a predictable rhythmical patter either. The rhyme
scheme of the first eight lines is; ab cd ef gb which cements the conclusion that the Lord Byron’s
poem; Darkness, is a blank verse.
Lord Byron carefully chooses his diction to bring out a vivid description of how the
world will be during its ending. He uses emotional and descriptive words that create an absurd
and resigned tone. First, he chooses the noun ‘Darkness’ as the title of the poem. The word
evokes fear and it forebodes the end of life on earth. Secondly, he introduces the poem in a very
provoking manner when he writes "I had a dream, which was not all a dream" (Line 1). The first
‘dream’ makes the reader feel like this is an imaginary poem only for the second ‘dream’ to
nullify the previous feeling which further fuels the feeling of fear and uncertainty on what is
ahead. Other nouns in the poem that evoke the feelings of the reader are:
The adjectives such as “ray less”, “wander” and “pathless” are used to describe the stars
and effectively create a sense of desperation and hopelessness to the dwellers of the earth. The
same effect is brought by the adjective “extinguished” which is used many times in the poem to
describe the sun and at the end, the loss of fire. Lastly, Byron effectively uses metaphors when
he describes human being as animals and unreasonable beings that plan their doom. He writes:
