Kim
Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised,With idiot moons and stars retracting stars?Creep thou between--thy coming's all unnoised.Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars.Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray(By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway);Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and sayWhich planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars.
Words in this poem
- idiot n.
- A man in private station, as distinguished from one holding a public office. [F. idiot, L. idiota an uneducated, ignorant, ill- informed person, Gr. Idiom.]
- threadbare a.
- Worn to the naked thread; having the nap worn off; threadbare clothes.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Kim 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, Kim, in Songs from Books (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15529, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-songs-from-books/kim.html, id L20352.
Form and metre
Kim is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
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 ABA-C-CB poisedA · starsB · unnoisedA · wars · frayC · alway · sayC · marsB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Unto whose use the pregnant suns are poised, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| With idiot moons and stars retracting stars? | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| Creep thou between--thy coming's all unnoised. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Heaven hath her high, as Earth her baser, wars. | 10 | /······/˘· |
| Heir to these tumults, this affright, that fray | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
| (By Adam's, fathers', own, sin bound alway); | 10 | ·/˘/˘···/˘ |
| Peer up, draw out thy horoscope and say | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Which planet mends thy threadbare fate, or mars. | 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.