The Heavenly Hills of Holland
The heavenly hills of Holland,--How wondrously they riseAbove the smooth green pasturesInto the azure skies!With blue and purple hollows,With peaks of dazzling snow,Along the far horizonThe clouds are marching slow.
No mortal foot has troddenThe summits of that range,Nor walked those mystic valleysWhose colours ever change;Yet we possess their beauty,And visit them in dreams,While ruddy gold of sunsetFrom cliff and canyon gleams.
In days of cloudless weatherThey melt into the light;When fog and mist surround usThey're hidden from our sight;But when returns a seasonClear shining after rain,While the northwest wind is blowing,We see the hills again.
The old Dutch painters loved them,Their pictures show them fair,--Old Hobbema and Ruysdael,Van Goyen and Vermeer.Above the level landscape,Rich polders, long-armed mills,Canals and ancient cities,--Float Holland's heavenly hills.
Words in this poem
- canyon n.
- The English form of the Spanish word Cañon.
- cloudless a.
- Without a cloud; clear; bright.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Heavenly Hills of Holland 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 Heavenly Hills of Holland, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/the-heavenly-hills-of-holland.html, id L22777.
Form and metre
The Heavenly Hills of Holland is 32 lines in 4 stanzas of 8 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
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 -AAAAB-B holland · riseA · pasturesA · skiesA · hollowsA · snowB · horizon · slowB
- 2 -A-A-B-B trodden · rangeA · valleys · changeA · beauty · dreamsB · sunset · gleamsB
- 3 -A-ABB-B weather · lightA · us · sightA · seasonB · rainB · blowing · againB
- 4 -A-A-B-B them · fairA · ruysdael · vermeerA · landscape · millsB · cities · hillsB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The heavenly hills of Holland,-- | 8 | ·/˘˘··/˘ |
| How wondrously they rise | 6 | ······ |
| Above the smooth green pastures | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Into the azure skies! | 6 | ···/˘· |
| With blue and purple hollows, | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| With peaks of dazzling snow, | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| Along the far horizon | 7 | ˘/··˘/˘ |
| The clouds are marching slow. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| No mortal foot has trodden | 7 | ·/˘··/˘ |
| The summits of that range, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Nor walked those mystic valleys | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Whose colours ever change; | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Yet we possess their beauty, | 7 | ··˘/·/˘ |
| And visit them in dreams, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| While ruddy gold of sunset | 7 | ·/˘··/· |
| From cliff and canyon gleams. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| In days of cloudless weather | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| They melt into the light; | 6 | ······ |
| When fog and mist surround us | 7 | ····˘/· |
| They're hidden from our sight; | 7 | ·/˘·/˘· |
| But when returns a season | 7 | ··˘/·/˘ |
| Clear shining after rain, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| While the northwest wind is blowing, | 8 | ···/··/˘ |
| We see the hills again. | 6 | ····˘/ |
| The old Dutch painters loved them, | 7 | ···/˘·· |
| Their pictures show them fair,-- | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Old Hobbema and Ruysdael, | 7 | ······· |
| Van Goyen and Vermeer. | 5 | ···/˘ |
| Above the level landscape, | 7 | ···/˘/· |
| Rich polders, long-armed mills, | 7 | ·/˘··˘· |
| Canals and ancient cities,-- | 7 | ˘/·/˘/˘ |
| Float Holland's heavenly hills. | 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.