The Garland of Sleep
A wreath of poppy flowers,With leaves of lotus blended,Is carved on Life's facade of hours,From night to night suspended.
Along the columned wall,From birth's low portal starting,It flows, with even rise and fall,To death's dark door of parting.
How short each measured arc,How brief the columns' number!The wreath begins and ends in dark,And leads from sleep to slumber.
The marble garland seems,With braided leaf and bloom,To deck the palace of our dreamsAs if it were a tomb.
Words in this poem
- columned a.
- Having columns.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Garland of Sleep 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, The Garland of Sleep, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/the-garland-of-sleep.html, id L22828.
Form and metre
The Garland of Sleep is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 98%).
See other poems in iambic 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 ABAB flowersA · blendedB · hoursA · suspendedB
- 2 ABAB wallA · startingB · fallA · partingB
- 3 ABAB arcA · numberB · darkA · slumberB
- 4 ABAB seemsA · bloomB · dreamsA · tombB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A wreath of poppy flowers, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| With leaves of lotus blended, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Is carved on Life's facade of hours, | 8 | ····˘/·/ |
| From night to night suspended. | 7 | ····˘/˘ |
| Along the columned wall, | 7 | ˘/·/˘˘· |
| From birth's low portal starting, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| It flows, with even rise and fall, | 7 | ···/··· |
| To death's dark door of parting. | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| How short each measured arc, | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| How brief the columns' number! | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| The wreath begins and ends in dark, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| And leads from sleep to slumber. | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| The marble garland seems, | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| With braided leaf and bloom, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| To deck the palace of our dreams | 8 | ···/˘·/· |
| As if it were a tomb. | 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.