"Undine"
'Twas far away and long ago,When I was but a dreaming boy,This fairy tale of love and woeEntranced my heart with tearful joy;And while with white Undine I weptYour spirit,--ah, how strange it seems,--Was cradled in some star, and slept,Unconscious of her coming dreams.
Words in this poem
- tearful a.
- Abounding with tears; weeping; shedding tears; as, tearful eyes.
- undine n.
- One of a class of fabled female water spirits who might receive a human soul by intermarrying with a mortal. [G. undine, or F. ondin, ondine, from L. unda a wave, water.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
"Undine" 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, "Undine", in The Poems of Henry Van Dyke (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16229, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/van-dyke-poems/undine.html, id L22808.
Form and metre
"Undine" is 8 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCDCD. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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 ABABCDCD agoA · boyB · woeA · joyB · weptC · seemsD · sleptC · dreamsD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| 'Twas far away and long ago, | 8 | ··˘/··˘/ |
| When I was but a dreaming boy, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| This fairy tale of love and woe | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Entranced my heart with tearful joy; | 8 | ˘/···/˘· |
| And while with white Undine I wept | 8 | ····/··· |
| Your spirit,--ah, how strange it seems,-- | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Was cradled in some star, and slept, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Unconscious of her coming dreams. | 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.