The Valley
I know a valley in the summer hills,Haunted by little winds and daffodils;Faint footfalls and soft shadows pass at noon;Noiseless, at night, the clouds assemble there;And ghostly summits hang below the moon--Dim visions lightly swung in silent air.
Words in this poem
- haunted a.
- Inhabited by, or subject to the visits of, apparitions; frequented by a ghost.
- ghostly a.
- Relating to the soul; not carnal or secular; spiritual; as, a ghostly confessor. [OE. gastlich, gostlich, AS. gastlic. See Ghost.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Valley is in the public domain. This text is taken from The man with the hoe, and other poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #67012; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edwin Markham, The Valley, in The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #67012, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/markham-man-with-hoe/the-valley.html, id L24782.
Form and metre
The Valley is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes AABCBC. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
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 AABCBC hillsA · daffodilsA · noonB · thereC · moonB · airC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| I know a valley in the summer hills, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Haunted by little winds and daffodils; | 10 | /˘·/˘··/˘· |
| Faint footfalls and soft shadows pass at noon; | 10 | ·/···/···· |
| Noiseless, at night, the clouds assemble there; | 10 | /˘····˘/˘· |
| And ghostly summits hang below the moon-- | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| Dim visions lightly swung in silent air. | 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.