In Her Tower of Yaddo
This is the window's message,In silence, to the Queen:"Thou hast a double kingdomAnd I am set between:Look out and see the glory,On hill and plain and sky:Look in and see the light of loveThat nevermore shall die!"
Words in this poem
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- nevermore adv.
- Never again; at no time hereafter. Testament of Love. Tyndale.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
In Her Tower of Yaddo 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, In Her Tower of Yaddo, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/in-her-tower-of-yaddo.html, id L22866.
Form and metre
In Her Tower of Yaddo is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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-B-B message · queenA · kingdom · betweenA · glory · skyB · love · 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 |
|---|---|---|
| This is the window's message, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| In silence, to the Queen: | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| "Thou hast a double kingdom | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| And I am set between: | 6 | ······ |
| Look out and see the glory, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| On hill and plain and sky: | 6 | ······ |
| Look in and see the light of love | 8 | ········ |
| That nevermore shall 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.