The Talisman
What is Fortune, what is Fame?Futile gold and phantom name,--Riches buried in a cave,Glory written on a grave.
What is Friendship? Something deepThat the heart can spend and keep:Wealth that greatens while we give,Praise that heartens us to live.
Come, my friend, and let us proveLife's true talisman is love!By this charm we shall eludePoverty and solitude.
Words in this poem
- futile a.
- Talkative; loquacious; tattling. [L. futilis that easily pours out, that easily lets loose, vain, worthless, from the root of fundere to pour out: cf. F. futile. See Fuse, v. t.]
- wealth n.
- Weal; welfare; prosperity; good. [OE. welthe, from wele; cf. D. weelde luxury. See Weal prosperity.]
- 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,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Talisman 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 Talisman, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/the-talisman.html, id L22898.
Form and metre
The Talisman is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See 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 AABB fameA · nameA · caveB · graveB
- 2 AABB deepA · keepA · giveB · liveB
- 3 AABB proveA · loveA · eludeB · solitudeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| What is Fortune, what is Fame? | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Futile gold and phantom name,-- | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Riches buried in a cave, | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| Glory written on a grave. | 7 | /˘/˘··· |
| What is Friendship? Something deep | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| That the heart can spend and keep: | 7 | ······· |
| Wealth that greatens while we give, | 7 | ······· |
| Praise that heartens us to live. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Come, my friend, and let us prove | 7 | ······· |
| Life's true talisman is love! | 7 | ··/˘˘·· |
| By this charm we shall elude | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Poverty and solitude. | 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.