Moral
Avoid a country where the seaMay any day drop in to tea,Rememb'ring that, at golf, one touchOf bunker makes the whole world Dutch!
Words in this poem
- avoid v. t.
- To empty. Wyclif. [OF. esvuidier, es (L. ex) + vuidier, voidier, to empty. See Void, a.]
- bunker n.
- A sort of chest or box, as in a window, the lid of which serves for a seat. Jamieson. [Scot. bunker, bunkart, a bench, or low chest, serving for a seat. Cf. Bunk, Bank, Bench.]
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-3.html, id L23304.
Form and metre
Moral is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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 AABB seaA · teaA · touchB · dutchB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Avoid a country where the sea | 8 | ˘/·/˘··· |
| May any day drop in to tea, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Rememb'ring that, at golf, one touch | 8 | ········ |
| Of bunker makes the whole world Dutch! | 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.