Indian Summer
A silken curtain veils the skies,And half conceals from pensive eyesThe bronzing tokens of the fall;A calmness broods upon the hills,And summer's parting dream distilsA charm of silence over all.
The stacks of corn, in brown array,Stand waiting through the tranquil day,Like tattered wigwams on the plain;The tribes that find a shelter thereAre phantom peoples, forms of air,And ghosts of vanished joy and pain.
At evening when the crimson crestOf sunset passes down the West,I hear the whispering host returning;On far-off fields, by elm and oak,I see the lights, I smell the smoke,--The Camp-fires of the Past are burning.
Words in this poem
- bronzing n.
- The act or art of communicating to articles in metal, wood, clay, plaster, etc., the appearance of bronze by means of bronze powders, or imitative painting, or by chemical processes. Tomlinson.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Indian Summer 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, Indian Summer, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/indian-summer.html, id L22768.
Form and metre
Indian Summer is 18 lines in 3 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABCCB. 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 AABCCB skiesA · eyesA · fallB · hillsC · distilsC · allB
- 2 AABCCB arrayA · dayA · plainB · thereC · airC · painB
- 3 AABCCB crestA · westA · returningB · oakC · smokeC · burningB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A silken curtain veils the skies, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And half conceals from pensive eyes | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| The bronzing tokens of the fall; | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| A calmness broods upon the hills, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| And summer's parting dream distils | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| A charm of silence over all. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The stacks of corn, in brown array, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Stand waiting through the tranquil day, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Like tattered wigwams on the plain; | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| The tribes that find a shelter there | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Are phantom peoples, forms of air, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And ghosts of vanished joy and pain. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| At evening when the crimson crest | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Of sunset passes down the West, | 8 | ·/·/˘··· |
| I hear the whispering host returning; | 9 | ···/˘·˘/˘ |
| On far-off fields, by elm and oak, | 8 | ········ |
| I see the lights, I smell the smoke,-- | 8 | ········ |
| The Camp-fires of the Past are burning. | 9 | ··/····/˘ |
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.