Moral
No moral that I ever tookSeemed quite so evident before.If purchasing an author's bookWill keep the wolf from his back-door,It is our very obvious missionTo buy up the entire edition.
Words in this poem
- obvious a.
- Opposing; fronting. [L. obvius; ob (see Ob-) + via way. See Voyage.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Moral is in the public domain. This text is taken from Verse and Worse, Project Gutenberg ebook #36702; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Harry Graham, Moral, in Verse and Worse (1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36702, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/graham-verse-and-worse/moral-12.html, id L23360.
Form and metre
Moral is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 74%).
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 ABABCC tookA · beforeB · bookA · doorB · missionC · editionC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| No moral that I ever took | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Seemed quite so evident before. | 8 | ···/˘˘·· |
| If purchasing an author's book | 8 | ·/˘˘·/˘· |
| Will keep the wolf from his back-door, | 8 | ········ |
| It is our very obvious mission | 9 | ··//˘/˘/˘ |
| To buy up the entire edition. | 9 | ····˘/˘/˘ |
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.