Night Watch
If slumber should forsakeThy pillow in the dark,Fret not thyself to markHow long thou liest awake.There is a better way;Let go the strife and strain,Thine eyes will close again,If thou wilt only pray.
Lord, Thy peaceful gift restore,Give my body sleep once more:While I wait my soul will restLike a child upon Thy breast.
Words in this poem
- strife n.
- The act of striving; earnest endeavor. [OF. estrif. See Strive.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Night Watch 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, Night Watch, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/night-watch.html, id L22853.
Form and metre
Night Watch is 12 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%).
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 ABBACDDC forsakeA · darkB · markB · awakeA · wayC · strainD · againD · prayC
- 2 AABB restoreA · moreA · restB · breastB
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| If slumber should forsake | 6 | ·/˘·˘/ |
| Thy pillow in the dark, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Fret not thyself to mark | 6 | ··˘/·· |
| How long thou liest awake. | 6 | ····˘/ |
| There is a better way; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Let go the strife and strain, | 6 | ······ |
| Thine eyes will close again, | 6 | ····˘/ |
| If thou wilt only pray. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Lord, Thy peaceful gift restore, | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| Give my body sleep once more: | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| While I wait my soul will rest | 7 | ······· |
| Like a child upon Thy breast. | 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.