In Praise of Poets
Mother EarthMiltonWordsworthKeatsShelleyRobert BrowningTennyson"In Memoriam"Victor HugoLongfellowThomas Bailey AldrichEdmund Clarence StedmanTo James Whitcomb RileyRichard Watson GilderThe Valley of Vain Verses
Words in this poem
- clarence n.
- A close four-wheeled carriage, with one seat inside, and a seat for the driver.
- gilder n.
- One who gilds; one whose occupation is to overlay with gold.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
In Praise of Poets 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 Praise of Poets, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/in-praise-of-poets.html, id L22742.
Form and metre
In Praise of Poets is 15 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
See 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 A-A------------ earthA · milton · wordsworthA · keats · shelley · browning · tennyson · memoriam · hugo · longfellow · aldrich · stedman · riley · gilder · verses
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Mother Earth | 3 | /˘· |
| Milton | 2 | /˘ |
| Wordsworth | 2 | /˘ |
| Keats | 1 | · |
| Shelley | 2 | /˘ |
| Robert Browning | 4 | /˘/˘ |
| Tennyson | 3 | /˘˘ |
| "In Memoriam" | 4 | ···· |
| Victor Hugo | 4 | /˘/˘ |
| Longfellow | 3 | /·˘ |
| Thomas Bailey Aldrich | 6 | /˘/˘/˘ |
| Edmund Clarence Stedman | 6 | /˘/˘/˘ |
| To James Whitcomb Riley | 6 | ··/˘/˘ |
| Richard Watson Gilder | 6 | /˘/˘/˘ |
| The Valley of Vain Verses | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
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.