The Birds
When Jesus Christ was four years old,The angels brought Him toys of gold,Which no man ever had bought or sold.
And yet with these He would not play.He made Him small fowl out of clay,And blessed them till they flew away:Tu creasti Domine.
Jesus Christ, Thou child so wise,Bless mine hands and fill mine eyes,And bring my soul to Paradise.
Words in this poem
- domine n.
- A name given to a pastor of the Reformed Church. The word is also applied locally in the United States, in colloquial speech, to any clergyman. [See Dominie.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Birds 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, The Birds, in Sonnets and Verse (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60663, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/belloc-sonnets-verse/the-birds.html, id L21676.
Form and metre
The Birds is 10 lines in 3 verse paragraphs. It is in rhyming couplets, 60% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AAA oldA · goldA · soldA
- 2 AAA- playA · clayA · awayA · domine
- 3 AA- wiseA · eyesA · paradise
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When Jesus Christ was four years old, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The angels brought Him toys of gold, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Which no man ever had bought or sold. | 8 | ···/···· |
| And yet with these He would not play. | 8 | ········ |
| He made Him small fowl out of clay, | 8 | ········ |
| And blessed them till they flew away: | 8 | ······˘/ |
| Tu creasti Domine. | 6 | ···˘/˘ |
| Jesus Christ, Thou child so wise, | 7 | /˘····· |
| Bless mine hands and fill mine eyes, | 7 | ······· |
| And bring my soul to Paradise. | 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.