The Peaceful Warrior
I have no joy in strife,Peace is my great desire;Yet God forbid I lose my lifeThrough fear to face the fire.
A peaceful man must fightFor that which peace demands,--Freedom and faith, honor and right,Defend with heart and hands.
Farewell, my friendly books;Farewell, ye woods and streams;The fate that calls me forward looksTo a duty beyond dreams.
Oh, better to be deadWith a face turned to the sky,Than live beneath a slavish dreadAnd serve a giant lie.
Stand up, my heart, and striveFor the things most dear to thee!Why should we care to be aliveUnless the world is free?
Words in this poem
- strife n.
- The act of striving; earnest endeavor. [OF. estrif. See Strive.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Peaceful Warrior 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 Peaceful Warrior, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/the-peaceful-warrior.html, id L22944.
Form and metre
The Peaceful Warrior is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is short measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in short measure.
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 strifeA · desireB · lifeA · fireB
- 2 ABAB fightA · demandsB · rightA · handsB
- 3 ABAB booksA · streamsB · looksA · dreamsB
- 4 ABAB deadA · skyB · dreadA · lieB
- 5 ABAB striveA · theeB · aliveA · freeB
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 short measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I have no joy in strife, | 6 | ······ |
| Peace is my great desire; | 7 | ····˘/˘ |
| Yet God forbid I lose my life | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| Through fear to face the fire. | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| A peaceful man must fight | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| For that which peace demands,-- | 6 | ····˘/ |
| Freedom and faith, honor and right, | 8 | /˘··/˘·· |
| Defend with heart and hands. | 6 | ˘/···· |
| Farewell, my friendly books; | 6 | ·/·/˘· |
| Farewell, ye woods and streams; | 6 | ·/···· |
| The fate that calls me forward looks | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| To a duty beyond dreams. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Oh, better to be dead | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| With a face turned to the sky, | 7 | ······· |
| Than live beneath a slavish dread | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And serve a giant lie. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Stand up, my heart, and strive | 6 | ······ |
| For the things most dear to thee! | 7 | ······· |
| Why should we care to be alive | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Unless the world is free? | 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.