The Glacier
At dawn in silence moves the mighty stream,The silver-crested waves no murmur make;But far away the avalanches wakeThe rumbling echoes, dull as in a dream;Their momentary thunders, dying, seemTo fall into the stillness, flake by flake,And leave the hollow air with naught to breakThe frozen spell of solitude supreme.
At noon unnumbered rills begin to springBeneath the burning sun, and all the wallsOf all the ocean-blue crevasses ringWith liquid lyrics of their waterfalls;As if a poet's heart had felt the glowOf sovereign love, and song began to flow.
Words in this poem
- rumbling
- a. & n. from Rumble, v. i.
- stillness n.
- The quality or state of being still; quietness; silence; calmness; inactivity.
- flake n.
- A paling; a hurdle. [prov. Eng.] [Cf. Icel. flaki, fleki, Dan. flage, D. vlaak.]
- unnumbered a.
- Not numbered; not counted or estimated; innumerable.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Glacier 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 Glacier, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/the-glacier.html, id L22747.
Form and metre
The Glacier is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 98%).
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 ABBAABBA streamA · makeB · wakeB · dreamA · seemA · flakeB · breakB · supremeA
- 2 ABABCC springA · wallsB · ringA · waterfallsB · glowC · flowC
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.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| At dawn in silence moves the mighty stream, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| The silver-crested waves no murmur make; | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| But far away the avalanches wake | 10 | ··˘/·/˘·˘· |
| The rumbling echoes, dull as in a dream; | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| Their momentary thunders, dying, seem | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘/˘· |
| To fall into the stillness, flake by flake, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And leave the hollow air with naught to break | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| The frozen spell of solitude supreme. | 10 | ·/˘··/˘·˘/ |
| At noon unnumbered rills begin to spring | 10 | ··˘/˘·˘/·· |
| Beneath the burning sun, and all the walls | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Of all the ocean-blue crevasses ring | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| With liquid lyrics of their waterfalls; | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| As if a poet's heart had felt the glow | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Of sovereign love, and song began to flow. | 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.