Garden Days
I Night and DayII Nest EggsIII The FlowersIV Summer SunV The Dumb SoldierVI Autumn FiresVII The GardenerVIII Historical Associations
Words in this poem
- gardener n.
- One who makes and tends a garden; a horticulturist.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Garden Days is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Child's Garden of Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #136; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Louis Stevenson, Garden Days, in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #136, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevenson-childs-garden/garden-days.html, id L07171.
Form and metre
Garden Days is 8 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is trochaic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 4.9 syllables. 5 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 100% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in trochaic dimeter.
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.
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 trochaic dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I Night and Day | 4 | ···· |
| II Nest Eggs | 3 | ··· |
| III The Flowers | 4 | ··/˘ |
| IV Summer Sun | 4 | ·/˘· |
| V The Dumb Soldier | 5 | ···/˘ |
| VI Autumn Fires | 5 | ·/˘/˘ |
| VII The Gardener | 5 | ··/˘˘ |
| VIII Historical Associations | 9 | ·˘/˘˘·˘/˘ |
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.