Envoi

Hilaire Belloc (1870–1953) · 1923

iambic tetrameter · 4 lines · from Sonnets and Verse

And, Botha lay at Pilgrim’s RestAnd Myberg in the Great Karroo(A desert to the south and west),And Consols are at 82.

Words in this poem

consols n.
The leading British funded government security. [A contraction of consolidated (annuities).]

Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.

About this text

Envoi is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sonnets and Verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #60663; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.

Cite as: Hilaire Belloc, Envoi, in Sonnets and Verse (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60663, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/belloc-sonnets-verse/envoi-2.html, id L21696.

Form and metre

Envoi is 4 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.

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. 1 A-A- restA · karroo · westA · —
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.

LineSyl.Stress
And, Botha lay at Pilgrim’s Rest8·/˘··/˘·
And Myberg in the Great Karroo8······˘/
(A desert to the south and west),8·/˘·····
And Consols are at 82.5·/˘··

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.

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