The Garden of Dreams
My heart is a garden of dreamsWhere you walk when day is done,Fair as the royal flowers,Calm as the lingering sun.
Never a drouth comes there,Nor any frost that mars,Only the wind of loveUnder the early stars,--
The living breath that movesWhispering to and fro,Like the voice of God in the duskOf the garden long ago.
About this text
The Garden of Dreams is in the public domain. This text is taken from Later Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #33417; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Bliss Carman, The Garden of Dreams, in Later Poems (1921), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #33417, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/carman-later-poems/the-garden-of-dreams.html, id L10983.
Form and metre
The Garden of Dreams is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.7 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 33% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 -A-A dreams · doneA · flowers · sunA
- 2 -A-A there · marsA · love · starsA
- 3 -A-A moves · froA · dusk · agoA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| My heart is a garden of dreams | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| Where you walk when day is done, | 7 | ······· |
| Fair as the royal flowers, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Calm as the lingering sun. | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| Never a drouth comes there, | 6 | /˘···· |
| Nor any frost that mars, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Only the wind of love | 6 | /˘···· |
| Under the early stars,-- | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The living breath that moves | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Whispering to and fro, | 6 | /˘˘··· |
| Like the voice of God in the dusk | 8 | ········ |
| Of the garden long ago. | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.