By Word of Mouth
They burnt a corpse upon the sand--The light shone out afar;It guided home the plunging boatsThat beat from Zanzibar.Spirit of Fire, where'er Thy altars rise,Thou art the Light of Guidance to our eyes!
Words in this poem
- corpse n.
- A human body in general, whether living or dead; -- sometimes contemptuosly. [OF. cors (sometimes written corps), F. corps, L. corpus; akin to AS. hrif womb. See Midriff, and cf. Corse, Corselet, Corps, Cuerpo.]
- afar adv.
- At, to, or from a great distance; far away; -- often used with from preceding, or off following; as, he was seen from afar; I saw him afar off. [Pref. a-.(for on or of) + far.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
By Word of Mouth is in the public domain. This text is taken from Songs from Books, Project Gutenberg ebook #15529; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Rudyard Kipling, By Word of Mouth, in Songs from Books (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15529, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-songs-from-books/by-word-of-mouth.html, id L20297.
Form and metre
By Word of Mouth is 6 lines in a single stanza.
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 -A-ABB sand · afarA · boats · zanzibarA · riseB · eyesB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| They burnt a corpse upon the sand-- | 8 | ········ |
| The light shone out afar; | 6 | ····˘/ |
| It guided home the plunging boats | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| That beat from Zanzibar. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Spirit of Fire, where'er Thy altars rise, | 10 | /·/˘˘/·/˘· |
| Thou art the Light of Guidance to our eyes! | 10 | ·····/˘·/· |
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.