Dreams
Be gentle, O hands of a child;Be true: like a shadowy seaIn the starry darkness of nightAre your eyes to me.
But words are shallow, and soonDreams fade that the heart once knew;And youth fades out in the mind,In the dark eyes too.
What can a tired heart say,Which the wise of the world have made dumb?Save to the lonely dreams of a child,'Return again, come!'
Words in this poem
- starry a.
- Abounding with stars; adorned with stars.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Dreams is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Listeners and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #22569; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Walter de la Mare, Dreams, in The Listeners and Other Poems (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22569, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/de-la-mare-listeners/dreams.html, id L17082.
Form and metre
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 76%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.9 syllables. 25% 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 child · seaA · night · meA
- 2 -A-A soon · knewA · mind · tooA
- 3 -A-A say · dumbA · child · comeA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Be gentle, O hands of a child; | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Be true: like a shadowy sea | 7 | ····/˘· |
| In the starry darkness of night | 8 | ··/˘/˘·· |
| Are your eyes to me. | 5 | ····· |
| But words are shallow, and soon | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Dreams fade that the heart once knew; | 7 | ······· |
| And youth fades out in the mind, | 7 | ······· |
| In the dark eyes too. | 5 | ····· |
| What can a tired heart say, | 6 | ···/·· |
| Which the wise of the world have made dumb? | 9 | ········· |
| Save to the lonely dreams of a child, | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| 'Return again, come!' | 5 | ˘/˘/· |
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.