Carmina Festiva
The Little-Neck ClamA Fairy TaleThe Ballad of the Solemn AssA Ballad of Santa ClausArs AgricolarisAngler's Fireside SongHow Spring Comes to Shasta JimA Bunch of Trout-Flies
Words in this poem
- fireside n.
- A place near the fire or hearth; home; domestic life or retirement.
- shasta n.
- A mountain peak, etc., in California.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Carmina Festiva 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, Carmina Festiva, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/carmina-festiva.html, id L22744.
Form and metre
Carmina Festiva is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The Little-Neck Clam | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| A Fairy Tale | 4 | ·/˘· |
| The Ballad of the Solemn Ass | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| A Ballad of Santa Claus | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| Ars Agricolaris | 6 | ······ |
| Angler's Fireside Song | 6 | /˘/˘·· |
| How Spring Comes to Shasta Jim | 7 | ····/˘· |
| A Bunch of Trout-Flies | 5 | ····· |
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.