Narrative Poems
The Toiling of FelixVeraAnother ChanceA Legend of ServiceThe White BeesNew Year's EveThe Vain KingThe Foolish Fir-Tree"Gran' Boule"Heroes of the "Titanic"The Standard-BearerThe Proud Lady
About this text
Narrative Poems 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, Narrative Poems, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/narrative-poems.html, id L22736.
Form and metre
Narrative Poems is 12 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The Toiling of Felix | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| Vera | 2 | /˘ |
| Another Chance | 4 | ˘/˘· |
| A Legend of Service | 6 | ·/˘·/˘ |
| The White Bees | 3 | ··· |
| New Year's Eve | 3 | ··· |
| The Vain King | 3 | ··· |
| The Foolish Fir-Tree | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| "Gran' Boule" | 2 | ·· |
| Heroes of the "Titanic" | 7 | /˘··˘/˘ |
| The Standard-Bearer | 5 | ·/˘/˘ |
| The Proud Lady | 4 | ··/˘ |
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.