One World

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) · 1925

iambic pentameter · 6 lines · from The Poems of Henry Van Dyke

"The worlds in which we live are two:The world 'I am' and the world 'I do,'"

The worlds in which we live at heart are one,The world "I am," the fruit of "I have done";And underneath these worlds of flower and fruit,The world "I love,"--the only living root.

About this text

One World 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, One World, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/one-world.html, id L22889.

Form and metre

One World is 6 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).

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. 1 AA twoA · doA
  2. 2 AABB oneA · doneA · fruitB · rootB
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.

LineSyl.Stress
"The worlds in which we live are two:8········
The world 'I am' and the world 'I do,'"9·········
The worlds in which we live at heart are one,10··········
The world "I am," the fruit of "I have done";10··········
And underneath these worlds of flower and fruit,10··˘/···/··
The world "I love,"--the only living root.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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