Hesper
Her eyes are like the evening air,Her voice is like a rose,Her lips are like a lovely song,That ripples as it flows,And she herself is sweeter thanThe sweetest thing she knows.
A slender, haunting, twilight formOf wonder and surprise,She seemed a fairy or a child,Till, deep within her eyes,I saw the homeward-leading starOf womanhood arise.
Words in this poem
- homeward a.
- Being in the direction of home; as, the homeward way.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Hesper 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, Hesper, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/hesper.html, id L22816.
Form and metre
Hesper is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%).
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 -A-A-A air · roseA · song · flowsA · than · knowsA
- 2 -A-A-A form · surpriseA · child · eyesA · star · ariseA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Her eyes are like the evening air, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Her voice is like a rose, | 6 | ······ |
| Her lips are like a lovely song, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| That ripples as it flows, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| And she herself is sweeter than | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| The sweetest thing she knows. | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| A slender, haunting, twilight form | 8 | ·/˘/˘/·· |
| Of wonder and surprise, | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| She seemed a fairy or a child, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Till, deep within her eyes, | 6 | ······ |
| I saw the homeward-leading star | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Of womanhood arise. | 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.