L'Envoi
Window in the Queen's high tower,This shall be thy magic power!Shut the darkness and the doubt,Shut the storm and conflict, out;Wind and hail and snow and rainDash against thee all in vain.Let in nothing from the night,--Let in every ray of light!
Words in this poem
- 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
L'Envoi 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, L'Envoi, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/l-envoi.html, id L22867.
Form and metre
L'Envoi is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in trochaic 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 AABBCCDD towerA · powerA · doubtB · outB · rainC · vainC · nightD · lightD
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Window in the Queen's high tower, | 8 | /˘····/˘ |
| This shall be thy magic power! | 8 | ····/˘/˘ |
| Shut the darkness and the doubt, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Shut the storm and conflict, out; | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Wind and hail and snow and rain | 7 | ······· |
| Dash against thee all in vain. | 7 | ······· |
| Let in nothing from the night,-- | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Let in every ray of light! | 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.