Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts Companionable Books

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) · 1925

iambic pentameter · 9 lines · from The Poems of Henry Van Dyke

Songs out of DoorsGolden StarsThe Red FlowerThe Grand Canyon, and Other PoemsThe White Bees, and Other PoemsThe Builders, and Other PoemsMusic, and Other PoemsThe Toiling of Felix, and Other PoemsThe House of Rimmon

Words in this poem

canyon n.
The English form of the Spanish word Cañon.

Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.

About this text

Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts Companionable Books 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, Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts Companionable Books, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/camp-fires-and-guide-posts-companionable-books.html, id L22733.

Form and metre

Camp-Fires and Guide-Posts Companionable Books is 9 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.

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. 1 ---AAAAA- doors · stars · flower · poemsA · poemsA · poemsA · poemsA · poemsA · rimmon
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.

LineSyl.Stress
Songs out of Doors4····
Golden Stars3/˘·
The Red Flower4··/˘
The Grand Canyon, and Other Poems9··/˘·/˘/˘
The White Bees, and Other Poems8····/˘/˘
The Builders, and Other Poems8·/˘·/˘/˘
Music, and Other Poems7/˘·/˘/˘
The Toiling of Felix, and Other Poems11·/˘·/˘·/˘/˘
The House of Rimmon5·····

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.

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