Four Things
Four things a man must learn to doIf he would make his record true:To think without confusion clearly;To love his fellow-men sincerely;To act from honest motives purely;To trust in God and Heaven securely.
Words in this poem
- sincerely adv.
- In a sincere manner. Specifically: (a) Purely; without alloy.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Four Things 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, Four Things, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/four-things.html, id L22895.
Form and metre
Four Things is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 AABBCC doA · trueA · clearlyB · sincerelyB · purelyC · securelyC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Four things a man must learn to do | 8 | ········ |
| If he would make his record true: | 8 | ·····˘/· |
| To think without confusion clearly; | 9 | ····˘/˘/˘ |
| To love his fellow-men sincerely; | 9 | ···/˘·˘/˘ |
| To act from honest motives purely; | 9 | ···/˘/˘/˘ |
| To trust in God and Heaven securely. | 10 | ·····/˘˘/˘ |
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.