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Moving Bells

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) · 1925

iambic pentameter · 14 lines · from The Poems of Henry Van Dyke

I love the hour that comes, with dusky hairAnd dewy feet, along the Alpine dells,To lead the cattle forth. A thousand bellsGo chiming after her across the fairAnd flowery uplands, while the rosy flareOf sunset on the snowy mountain dwells,And valleys darken, and the drowsy spellsOf peace are woven through the purple air.

Dear is the magic of this hour: she seemsTo walk before the dark by falling rills,And lend a sweeter song to hidden streams;She opens all the doors of night, and fillsWith moving bells the music of my dreams,That wander far among the sleeping hills.

Words in this poem

flare v. i.: To burn with an unsteady or waving flame; as, the candle flares. [Cf. Norw. flara to blaze, flame, adorn with tinsel, dial. Sw. flasa upp, and E. flash, or flacker.]
snowy a.: White like snow.

Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.

About this text

Moving Bells 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, Moving Bells, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/moving-bells.html, id L22749.

Form and metre

Moving Bells is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%).

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 ABBAABBA hair^A · dells^B · bells^B · fair^A · flare^A · dwells^B · spells^B · air^A
2 ABABAB seems^A · rills^B · streams^A · fills^B · dreams^A · hills^B

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
I love the hour that comes, with dusky hair	10	···/···/˘·
And dewy feet, along the Alpine dells,	10	·/˘·˘/·/··
To lead the cattle forth. A thousand bells	10	···/˘··/˘·
Go chiming after her across the fair	10	·/˘···˘/··
And flowery uplands, while the rosy flare	10	·/˘/˘··/˘·
Of sunset on the snowy mountain dwells,	10	·/···/˘/˘·
And valleys darken, and the drowsy spells	10	·/˘/˘··/˘·
Of peace are woven through the purple air.	10	···/˘··/˘·
Dear is the magic of this hour: she seems	10	···/˘··/··
To walk before the dark by falling rills,	10	·······/˘·
And lend a sweeter song to hidden streams;	10	···/˘··/˘·
She opens all the doors of night, and fills	10	·/˘·······
With moving bells the music of my dreams,	10	·/˘··/˘···
That wander far among the sleeping hills.	10	·/˘····/˘·

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.

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