Moral
Be kind to ev'ry bull you meet,Remember how the creature feels;Don't wink at ladies in the street;And don't make speeches after meals;And lastly, I need not explain,If you're a horse, don't go to Spain.
Words in this poem
- lastly adv.
- In the last place; in conclusion.
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-7.html, id L23314.
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 95%).
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 meetA · feelsB · streetA · mealsB · explainC · spainC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Be kind to ev'ry bull you meet, | 8 | ········ |
| Remember how the creature feels; | 8 | ˘/˘··/˘· |
| Don't wink at ladies in the street; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And don't make speeches after meals; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And lastly, I need not explain, | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| If you're a horse, don't go to Spain. | 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.