New Day
Ere thou risest from thy bed,Speak to God Whose wings were spreadO'er thee in the helpless night:Lo, He wakes thee now with light!Lift thy burden and thy careIn the mighty arms of prayer.
Lord, the newness of this dayCalls me to an untried way:Let me gladly take the road,Give me strength to bear my load,Thou my guide and helper be--I will travel through with Thee.
Words in this poem
- gladly adv.
- Preferably; by choice. [From Glad, a.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
New Day 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, New Day, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/new-day.html, id L22854.
Form and metre
New Day is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABBCC. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See 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 AABBCC bedA · spreadA · nightB · lightB · careC · prayerC
- 2 AABBCC dayA · wayA · roadB · loadB · beC · theeC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Ere thou risest from thy bed, | 7 | ······· |
| Speak to God Whose wings were spread | 7 | ······· |
| O'er thee in the helpless night: | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Lo, He wakes thee now with light! | 7 | ······· |
| Lift thy burden and thy care | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| In the mighty arms of prayer. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Lord, the newness of this day | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Calls me to an untried way: | 7 | ····˘/· |
| Let me gladly take the road, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Give me strength to bear my load, | 7 | ······· |
| Thou my guide and helper be-- | 7 | ····/˘· |
| I will travel through with Thee. | 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.