Thorn and Rose
Far richer than a thornless roseWhose branch with beauty never glows,Is that which every June adornsWith perfect bloom among its thorns.
Merely to live without a painIs little gladness, little gain,Ah, welcome joy tho' mixt with grief,--The thorn-set flower that crowns the leaf.
Words in this poem
- thornless a.
- Destitute of, or free from, thorns.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Thorn and Rose 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, Thorn and Rose, in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/thorn-and-rose.html, id L22899.
Form and metre
Thorn and Rose is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
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 AABB roseA · glowsA · adornsB · thornsB
- 2 AABB painA · gainA · griefB · leafB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Far richer than a thornless rose | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Whose branch with beauty never glows, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Is that which every June adorns | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| With perfect bloom among its thorns. | 8 | ·˘/····· |
| Merely to live without a pain | 8 | /˘······ |
| Is little gladness, little gain, | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| Ah, welcome joy tho' mixt with grief,-- | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The thorn-set flower that crowns the leaf. | 8 | ···/···· |
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.