Christine
The beauty of the Northern dawns,Their pure, pale light is thine;Yet all the dreams of tropic nightsWithin thy blue eyes shine.Not statelier in their prisoning seasThe icebergs grandly move,But in thy smile is youth and joy,And in thy voice is love.
Thou art like Hecla's crest that standsSo lonely, proud, and high,No earthly thing may come betweenHer summit and the sky.The sun in vain may strive to meltHer crown of virgin snow--But the great heart of the mountain glowsWith deathless fire below.
Words in this poem
- grandly adv.
- In a grand manner.
- deathless a.
- Not subject to death, destruction, or extinction; immortal; undying; imperishable; as, deathless beings; deathless fame.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Christine is in the public domain. This text is taken from Pike County Ballads and Other Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #6062; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Hay, Christine, in Pike County Ballads and Other Poems (1871), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6062, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hay-pike-county/christine.html, id L21597.
Form and metre
Christine is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
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-B-B dawns · thineA · nights · shineA · seas · moveB · joy · loveB
- 2 -A-A-B-B stands · highA · between · skyA · melt · snowB · glows · belowB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The beauty of the Northern dawns, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Their pure, pale light is thine; | 6 | ······ |
| Yet all the dreams of tropic nights | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Within thy blue eyes shine. | 6 | ······ |
| Not statelier in their prisoning seas | 9 | ······/˘· |
| The icebergs grandly move, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| But in thy smile is youth and joy, | 8 | ········ |
| And in thy voice is love. | 6 | ······ |
| Thou art like Hecla's crest that stands | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| So lonely, proud, and high, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| No earthly thing may come between | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Her summit and the sky. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| The sun in vain may strive to melt | 8 | ········ |
| Her crown of virgin snow-- | 6 | ···/˘· |
| But the great heart of the mountain glows | 9 | ······/˘· |
| With deathless fire below. | 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.