Roseleaf
A little while the rose,And after that the thorn;An hour of dewy morn,And then the glamour goes.Ah, love in beauty born,A little while the rose!
Words in this poem
- morn n.
- The first part of the day; the morning; -- used chiefly in poetry. [OE. morwen, morgen, AS. morgen; akin to D. morgen, OS. morgan, G. morgen, Icel. morginn, morgunn, Sw. morgon, Dan. morgen, Goth. maúrgins. Cf. Morrow, Morning.]
- glamour n.
- A charm affecting the eye, making objects appear different from what they really are. [Scot. glamour, glamer; cf. Icel. glámeggdr one who is troubled with the glaucoma; or Icel. glam-s weakness of sight, glamour; glamr name of the moon, also of a ]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Roseleaf 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, Roseleaf, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/roseleaf.html, id L22884.
Form and metre
Roseleaf is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBABA. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%).
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 ABBABA roseA · thornB · mornB · goesA · bornB · roseA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A little while the rose, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| And after that the thorn; | 6 | ······ |
| An hour of dewy morn, | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| And then the glamour goes. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Ah, love in beauty born, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| A little while the rose! | 6 | ·/˘··· |
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.