Doors of Daring
The mountains that inclose the valeWith walls of granite, steep and high,Invite the fearless foot to scaleTheir stairway toward the sky.
The restless, deep, dividing seaThat flows and foams from shore to shore,Calls to its sunburned chivalry,"Push out, set sail, explore!"
The bars of life at which we fret,That seem to prison and control,Are but the doors of daring, setAjar before the soul.
Say not, "Too poor," but freely give;Sigh not, "Too weak," but boldly try;You never can begin to liveUntil you dare to die.
Words in this poem
- vale n.
- A tract of low ground, or of land between hills; a valley. [OE. val, F. val, L. vallis; perhaps akin to Gr. Avalanche, Vail to lower, Valley.]
- stairway n.
- A flight of stairs or steps; a staircase.
- explore v. t.
- To seek for or after; to strive to attain by search; to look wisely and carefully for. [L. explorare to explore; ex out+plorare to cry out aloud,prob. orig., to cause to flow; perh. akin to E. flow: cf. F. explorer.]
- ajar adv.
- Slightly turned or opened; as, the door was standing ajar. [OE. on char ajar, on the turn; AS. cerr, cyrr, turn, akin to G. kehren to turn, and to D. akerre. See Char.]
- boldly adv.
- In a bold manner. [AS. bealdlice.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Doors of Daring 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, Doors of Daring, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/doors-of-daring.html, id L22804.
Form and metre
Doors of Daring is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 3 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See other poems in iambic 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 ABAB valeA · highB · scaleA · skyB
- 2 -A-A sea · shoreA · chivalry · exploreA
- 3 ABAB fretA · controlB · setA · soulB
- 4 ABAB giveA · tryB · liveA · dieB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The mountains that inclose the vale | 8 | ·/˘·˘/·· |
| With walls of granite, steep and high, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Invite the fearless foot to scale | 8 | ˘/·/˘··· |
| Their stairway toward the sky. | 7 | ·/····· |
| The restless, deep, dividing sea | 8 | ·/˘·˘/˘· |
| That flows and foams from shore to shore, | 8 | ········ |
| Calls to its sunburned chivalry, | 8 | ···/·/˘˘ |
| "Push out, set sail, explore!" | 6 | ····˘/ |
| The bars of life at which we fret, | 8 | ········ |
| That seem to prison and control, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| Are but the doors of daring, set | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Ajar before the soul. | 6 | ˘/···· |
| Say not, "Too poor," but freely give; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Sigh not, "Too weak," but boldly try; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| You never can begin to live | 8 | ·/˘·˘/·· |
| Until you dare to die. | 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.