The Standard-Bearer I
"How can I tell," Sir Edmund said,"Who has the right or the wrong o' this thing?Cromwell stands for the people's cause,Charles is crowned by the ancient laws;English meadows are sopping red,Englishmen striking each other dead,--Times are black as a raven's wing.Out of the ruck and the murk I seeOnly one thing!The King has trusted his banner to me,And I must fight for the King."
Words in this poem
- sopping
- more recent version of soppy. Used esp. in phrase sopping wet.
- ruck n.
- A roc. Drayton.
- murk n.
- Darkness; mirk.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Standard-Bearer I 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 Standard-Bearer I, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/the-standard-bearer-i.html, id L22796.
Form and metre
The Standard-Bearer I is 11 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABCCAABDBDB. The metre is dactylic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in dactylic trimeter.
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 ABCCAABDBDB saidA · thingB · causeC · lawsC · redA · deadA · wingB · seeD · thingB · meD · kingB
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 dactylic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| "How can I tell," Sir Edmund said, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| "Who has the right or the wrong o' this thing? | 10 | ·········· |
| Cromwell stands for the people's cause, | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| Charles is crowned by the ancient laws; | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| English meadows are sopping red, | 8 | /˘/··/˘· |
| Englishmen striking each other dead,-- | 9 | ·/˘/˘·/˘· |
| Times are black as a raven's wing. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Out of the ruck and the murk I see | 9 | ········· |
| Only one thing! | 4 | /˘·· |
| The King has trusted his banner to me, | 10 | ···/˘·/˘·· |
| And I must fight for the King." | 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.