Moral
There are folks about town--to name no names--Who much resemble that deafest of Dames!And over their tea, and muffins, and crumpets,Circulate many a scandalous word,And whisper tales they could only have heardThrough some such Diabolical Trumpets!
Words in this poem
- folks n.
- In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]
- scandalous a.
- Giving offense to the conscience or moral feelings; exciting reprobation; calling out condemnation. [Cf. F. scandaleux.]
- trumpets n.
- A plant (Sarracenia flava) with long, hollow leaves.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Moral is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Comic Poems of Thomas Hood A New and Complete Edition, Project Gutenberg ebook #56712; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Thomas Hood, Moral, in Poems (1827–1845), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56712, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/hood-poems/moral.html, id L06708.
Form and metre
Moral is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes AABCCB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 78% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.5 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 AABCCB namesA · damesA · crumpetsB · wordC · heardC · trumpetsB
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| There are folks about town--to name no names-- | 10 | ·········· |
| Who much resemble that deafest of Dames! | 10 | ··˘/˘·/˘·· |
| And over their tea, and muffins, and crumpets, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Circulate many a scandalous word, | 8 | /˘·/·/˘· |
| And whisper tales they could only have heard | 10 | ·/˘···/˘·· |
| Through some such Diabolical Trumpets! | 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.