"Du Bist Wie Eine Blume"
Fair art thou as a flowerAnd innocent and shy:I look on thee and sorrow;I grieve, I know not why.
I long to lay, in blessing,My hand upon thy brow,And pray that God may keep theeAs fair and pure as now.
About this text
"Du Bist Wie Eine Blume" 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, "Du Bist Wie Eine Blume", in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/du-bist-wie-eine-blume.html, id L22825.
Form and metre
"Du Bist Wie Eine Blume" is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
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.
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-A flower · shyA · sorrow · whyA
- 2 -A-A blessing · browA · thee · nowA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Fair art thou as a flower | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| And innocent and shy: | 6 | ·/˘˘·· |
| I look on thee and sorrow; | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| I grieve, I know not why. | 6 | ······ |
| I long to lay, in blessing, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| My hand upon thy brow, | 6 | ······ |
| And pray that God may keep thee | 7 | ······· |
| As fair and pure as now. | 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.