America
I love thine inland seas,Thy groves of giant trees,Thy rolling plains;Thy rivers' mighty sweep,Thy mystic canyons deep,Thy mountains wild and steep,All thy domains;
Thy silver Eastern strands,Thy Golden Gate that standsWide to the West;Thy flowery Southland fair,Thy sweet and crystal air,--O land beyond compare,Thee I love best!
About this text
America is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Henry Van Dyke, Project Gutenberg ebook #16229; 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 Van Dyke, America, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/america.html, id L22902.
Form and metre
America is 14 lines in 2 stanzas of 7 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABCCCB. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 AABCCCB seasA · treesA · plainsB · sweepC · deepC · steepC · domainsB
- 2 AABCCCB strandsA · standsA · westB · fairC · airC · compareC · bestB
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I love thine inland seas, | 6 | ···/·· |
| Thy groves of giant trees, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Thy rolling plains; | 4 | ·/˘· |
| Thy rivers' mighty sweep, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Thy mystic canyons deep, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Thy mountains wild and steep, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| All thy domains; | 4 | ··˘/ |
| Thy silver Eastern strands, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Thy Golden Gate that stands | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Wide to the West; | 4 | ···· |
| Thy flowery Southland fair, | 6 | ·/˘/·· |
| Thy sweet and crystal air,-- | 6 | ···/˘· |
| O land beyond compare, | 6 | ····˘/ |
| Thee I love best! | 4 | ···· |
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.