Holidays
The holiest of all holidays are thoseKept by ourselves in silence and apart;The secret anniversaries of the heart,When the full river of feeling overflows;--The happy days unclouded to their close;The sudden joys that out of darkness startAs flames from ashes; swift desires that dartLike swallows singing down each wind that blows!White as the gleam of a receding sail,White as a cloud that floats and fades in air,White as the whitest lily on a stream,These tender memories are;--a Fairy TaleOf some enchanted land we know not where,But lovely as a landscape in a dream.
Words in this poem
- enchanted a.
- Under the power of enchantment; possessed or exercised by enchanters; as, an enchanted castle.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Holidays is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Project Gutenberg ebook #1365; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Holidays, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/holidays.html, id L17768.
Form and metre
Holidays is 14 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBAABBACDECDE, the pattern of the Italian sonnet. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 29% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other Italian sonnets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 ABBAABBACDECDE thoseA · apartB · heartB · overflowsA · closeA · startB · dartB · blowsA · sailC · airD · streamE · taleC · whereD · dreamE
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The holiest of all holidays are those | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Kept by ourselves in silence and apart; | 10 | ··˘/·/˘·˘/ |
| The secret anniversaries of the heart, | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘··· |
| When the full river of feeling overflows;-- | 11 | ···/˘·/˘/˘· |
| The happy days unclouded to their close; | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| The sudden joys that out of darkness start | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| As flames from ashes; swift desires that dart | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
| Like swallows singing down each wind that blows! | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| White as the gleam of a receding sail, | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| White as a cloud that floats and fades in air, | 10 | ·········· |
| White as the whitest lily on a stream, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| These tender memories are;--a Fairy Tale | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Of some enchanted land we know not where, | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| But lovely as a landscape in a dream. | 10 | ·/˘··/···· |
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.