The Snow-Field
White Death had laid his pall upon the plain,And crowned the mountain-peaks like monarchs dead;The vault of heaven was glaring overheadWith pitiless light that filled my eyes with pain;And while I vainly longed, and looked in vainFor sign or trace of life, my spirit said,"Shall any living thing that dares to treadThis royal lair of Death escape again?"
But even then I saw before my feetA line of pointed footprints in the snow:Some roving chamois, but an hour ago,Had passed this way along his journey fleet,And left a message from a friend unknownTo cheer my pilgrim-heart, no more alone.
Words in this poem
- glaring a.
- Clear; notorious; open and bold; barefaced; as, a glaring crime.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- lair n.
- A place in which to lie or rest; especially, the bed or couch of a wild beast. [OE. leir, AS. leger; akin to D. leger, G. lager couch, lair, OHG. laga, Goth. ligrs, and to E. lie. See Lie to be prostrate, and cf. Layer, Leaguer.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Snow-Field 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 Snow-Field, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/the-snow-field.html, id L22748.
Form and metre
The Snow-Field is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%).
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 plainA · deadB · overheadB · painA · vainA · saidB · treadB · againA
- 2 ABBACC feetA · snowB · agoB · fleetA · unknownC · aloneC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| White Death had laid his pall upon the plain, | 10 | ·········· |
| And crowned the mountain-peaks like monarchs dead; | 10 | ···/˘··/·· |
| The vault of heaven was glaring overhead | 10 | ···/·/˘/˘/ |
| With pitiless light that filled my eyes with pain; | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And while I vainly longed, and looked in vain | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| For sign or trace of life, my spirit said, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| "Shall any living thing that dares to tread | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| This royal lair of Death escape again?" | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘/ |
| But even then I saw before my feet | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| A line of pointed footprints in the snow: | 10 | ···/˘/···· |
| Some roving chamois, but an hour ago, | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘/ |
| Had passed this way along his journey fleet, | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| And left a message from a friend unknown | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| To cheer my pilgrim-heart, no more alone. | 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.