The Castle-Builder
A gentle boy, with soft and silken locksA dreamy boy, with brown and tender eyes,A castle-builder, with his wooden blocks,And towers that touch imaginary skies.
A fearless rider on his father's knee,An eager listener unto stories toldAt the Round Table of the nursery,Of heroes and adventures manifold.
There will be other towers for thee to build;There will be other steeds for thee to ride;There will be other legends, and all filledWith greater marvels and more glorified.
Build on, and make thy castles high and fair,Rising and reaching upward to the skies;Listen to voices in the upper air,Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries.
Words in this poem
- dreamy a.
- Abounding in dreams or given to dreaming; appropriate to, or like, dreams; visionary.
- nursery n.
- The act of nursing. [Cf. F. nourricerie.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Castle-Builder 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, The Castle-Builder, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/the-castle-builder.html, id L17722.
Form and metre
The Castle-Builder is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 3 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 19% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See 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 ABAB locksA · eyesB · blocksA · skiesB
- 2 -A-A knee · toldA · nursery · manifoldA
- 3 ABAB buildA · rideB · filledA · glorifiedB
- 4 ABAB fairA · skiesB · airA · mysteriesB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A gentle boy, with soft and silken locks | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| A dreamy boy, with brown and tender eyes, | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| A castle-builder, with his wooden blocks, | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| And towers that touch imaginary skies. | 10 | ·/··˘/˘·˘· |
| A fearless rider on his father's knee, | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| An eager listener unto stories told | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| At the Round Table of the nursery, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘˘ |
| Of heroes and adventures manifold. | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘/˘· |
| There will be other towers for thee to build; | 10 | ···/˘/···· |
| There will be other steeds for thee to ride; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| There will be other legends, and all filled | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| With greater marvels and more glorified. | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| Build on, and make thy castles high and fair, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Rising and reaching upward to the skies; | 10 | /˘·/˘/˘··· |
| Listen to voices in the upper air, | 10 | /˘·/˘··/˘· |
| Nor lose thy simple faith in mysteries. | 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.