His Wedded Wife
Go, stalk the red deer o'er the heather,Ride, follow the fox if you can!But, for pleasure and profit together,Allow me the hunting of Man--The chase of the Human, the search for the SoulTo its ruin--the hunting of Man.
About this text
His Wedded Wife 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, His Wedded Wife, in Songs from Books (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15529, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-songs-from-books/his-wedded-wife.html, id L20293.
Form and metre
His Wedded Wife is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is anapaestic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
See other poems in anapaestic trimeter.
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 ABAB-B heatherA · canB · togetherA · manB · soul · manB
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 anapaestic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Go, stalk the red deer o'er the heather, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Ride, follow the fox if you can! | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| But, for pleasure and profit together, | 10 | ··/˘·/˘˘/˘ |
| Allow me the hunting of Man-- | 8 | ˘/··/˘·· |
| The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul | 11 | ····/˘····· |
| To its ruin--the hunting of Man. | 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.