Bedtime
Ere thou sleepest gently layEvery troubled thought away:Put off worry and distressAs thou puttest off thy dress:Drop thy burden and thy careIn the quiet arms of prayer.
Lord, Thou knowest how I live,All I've done amiss forgive:All of good I've tried to do,Strengthen, bless, and carry through,All I love in safety keep,While in Thee I fall asleep.
About this text
Bedtime 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, Bedtime, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/bedtime.html, id L22852.
Form and metre
Bedtime is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABBCC. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
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 AABBCC layA · awayA · distressB · dressB · careC · prayerC
- 2 AABBCC liveA · forgiveA · doB · throughB · keepC · asleepC
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Ere thou sleepest gently lay | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| Every troubled thought away: | 7 | /˘/˘·˘/ |
| Put off worry and distress | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| As thou puttest off thy dress: | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Drop thy burden and thy care | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| In the quiet arms of prayer. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Lord, Thou knowest how I live, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| All I've done amiss forgive: | 7 | ···˘/˘/ |
| All of good I've tried to do, | 7 | ······· |
| Strengthen, bless, and carry through, | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| All I love in safety keep, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| While in Thee I fall asleep. | 7 | ·····˘/ |
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.