Elephants of the Gun-Teams
We lent to Alexander the strength of Hercules,The wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of our knees.We bowed our necks to service; they ne'er were loosed again,--Make way there, way for the ten-foot teamsOf the Forty-Pounder train!
About this text
Elephants of the Gun-Teams 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, Elephants of the Gun-Teams, in Songs from Books (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15529, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-songs-from-books/elephants-of-the-gun-teams.html, id L20359.
Form and metre
Elephants of the Gun-Teams is 5 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 AAB-B herculesA · kneesA · againB · teams · trainB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| We lent to Alexander the strength of Hercules, | 13 | ····˘/˘···/˘· |
| The wisdom of our foreheads, the cunning of our knees. | 13 | ·/˘·//··/˘·/· |
| We bowed our necks to service; they ne'er were loosed again,-- | 13 | ··/··/˘····˘/ |
| Make way there, way for the ten-foot teams | 9 | ········· |
| Of the Forty-Pounder train! | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
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.