Day and Night
How long is the night, brother,And how long is the day?Oh, the day's too short for a happy task,And the day's too short for play;And the night's too short for the bliss of love,For look, how the edge of the sky grows gray,While the stars die out in the blue above,And the wan moon fades away.
How short is the day, brother,And how short is the night?Oh, the day's too long for a heavy task,And long, long, long is the night,When the wakeful hours are filled with pain,And the sad heart waits for the thing it fears,And sighs for the dawn to come again,--The night is a thousand years!
How long is a life, dear God,And how fast does it flow?The measure of life is a flame in the soul:It is neither swift nor slow.But the vision of time is the shadow castBy the fleeting world on the body's wall;When it fades there is neither future nor past,But love is all in all.
Words in this poem
- wakeful a.
- Not sleeping; indisposed to sleep; watchful; vigilant.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Day and Night 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, Day and Night, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/day-and-night.html, id L22815.
Form and metre
Day and Night is 24 lines in 3 stanzas of 8 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 74%).
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 -A-ABABA brother · dayA · task · playA · loveB · grayA · aboveB · awayA
- 2 -A-ABCBC brother · nightA · task · nightA · painB · fearsC · againB · yearsC
- 3 -A-ABCBC god · flowA · soul · slowA · castB · wallC · pastB · allC
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.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| How long is the night, brother, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| And how long is the day? | 6 | ······ |
| Oh, the day's too short for a happy task, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And the day's too short for play; | 7 | ······· |
| And the night's too short for the bliss of love, | 10 | ·········· |
| For look, how the edge of the sky grows gray, | 10 | ·········· |
| While the stars die out in the blue above, | 10 | ·········· |
| And the wan moon fades away. | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| How short is the day, brother, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| And how short is the night? | 6 | ······ |
| Oh, the day's too long for a heavy task, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And long, long, long is the night, | 7 | ······· |
| When the wakeful hours are filled with pain, | 10 | ··/˘/˘···· |
| And the sad heart waits for the thing it fears, | 10 | ·········· |
| And sighs for the dawn to come again,-- | 9 | ·······˘/ |
| The night is a thousand years! | 7 | ····/˘· |
| How long is a life, dear God, | 7 | ······· |
| And how fast does it flow? | 6 | ······ |
| The measure of life is a flame in the soul: | 11 | ·/˘········ |
| It is neither swift nor slow. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| But the vision of time is the shadow cast | 11 | ··/˘····/·· |
| By the fleeting world on the body's wall; | 10 | ··/˘···/˘· |
| When it fades there is neither future nor past, | 11 | ·····/˘/˘·· |
| But love is all in all. | 6 | ······ |
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.