Analysis of A Noon Song
Henry Van Dyke 1852 (Germantown, Pennsylvania) – 1933 (Princeton, New Jersey)
There are songs for the morning and songs for the night,
For sunrise and sunset, the stars and the moon;
But who will give praise to the fulness of light,
And sing us a song of the glory of noon?
Oh, the high noon, the clear noon,
The noon with golden crest;
When the blue sky burns, and the great sun turns
With his face to the way of the west!
How swiftly he rose in the dawn of his strength;
How slowly he crept as the morning wore by;
Ah, steep was the climbing that led him at length
To the height of his throne in the wide summer sky.
Oh, the long toil, the slow toil,
The toil that may not rest,
Till the sun looks down from his journey's crown,
To the wonderful way of the west!
Then a quietness falls over meadow and hill,
The wings of the wind in the forest are furled,
The river runs softly, the birds are all still,
The workers are resting all over the world.
Oh, the good hour, the kind hour,
The hour that calms the breast!
Little inn half-way on the road of the day,
Where it follows the turn to the west!
There's a plentiful feast in the maple-tree shade,
The lilt of a song to an old-fashioned tune,
The talk of a friend, or the kiss of a maid,
To sweeten the cup that we drink to the noon.
Oh, the deep noon, the full noon,
Of all the day the best!
When the blue sky burns, and the great sun turns
To his home by the way of the west.
Scheme | ababbcDc efefxcxc gagxxcxc hbhbbcDc |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111101001101 110101001 1111110111 01101101011 1011011 011101 1011100111 111101101 11011001111 11011101011 11101011111 101111001101 1011011 011111 101111111 101001101 10100110101 01101001011 01011001111 01011011001 101100110 0101101 10111101101 111001101 101001001011 01101111101 01101101101 11001111101 1011011 110101 1011100111 111101101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,359 |
Words | 277 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 4 |
Stanza Lengths | 8, 8, 8, 8 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 257 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 69 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on May 03, 2023
- 1:23 min read
- 37 Views
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"A Noon Song" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 2 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/18302/a-noon-song>.
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