The Hearth
When the logs are burning free,Then the fire is full of glee:When each heart gives out its best,Then the talk is full of zest:Light your fire and never fear,Life was made for love and cheer.
Words in this poem
- glee n.
- Music; minstrelsy; entertainment.
- zest n.
- A piece of orange or lemon peel, or the aromatic oil which may be squeezed from such peel, used to give flavor to liquor, etc. [F. zeste, probably fr. L. schistos split, cleft, divided, Gr. Schism.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Hearth 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 Hearth, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/the-hearth.html, id L22869.
Form and metre
The Hearth is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in trochaic 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 AABBCC freeA · gleeA · bestB · zestB · fearC · cheerC
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| When the logs are burning free, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Then the fire is full of glee: | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| When each heart gives out its best, | 7 | ······· |
| Then the talk is full of zest: | 7 | ······· |
| Light your fire and never fear, | 8 | ··/˘·/˘· |
| Life was made for love and cheer. | 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.