Red Dog
Man goes to Man! Cry the challenge through the Jungle!He that was our Brother goes away.Hear, now, and judge, O ye People of the Jungle,--Answer, who shall turn him--who shall stay?
Man goes to Man! He is weeping in the Jungle:He that was our Brother sorrows sore!Man goes to Man! (Oh, we loved him in the Jungle!)To the Man-Trail where we may not follow more.
Words in this poem
- jungle n.
- A dense growth of brushwood, grasses, reeds, vines, etc.; an almost impenetrable thicket of trees, canes, and reedy vegetation, as in India, Africa, Australia, and Brazil. [Hind. jangal desert, forest, jungle; Skr. ja desert.]
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Red Dog 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, Red Dog, in Songs from Books (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15529, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-songs-from-books/red-dog.html, id L20411.
Form and metre
Red Dog is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
See other poems in trochaic hexameter.
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 jungleA · awayB · jungleA · stayB
- 2 ABAB jungleA · soreB · jungleA · moreB
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 trochaic hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Man goes to Man! Cry the challenge through the Jungle! | 12 | ······/˘··/˘ |
| He that was our Brother goes away. | 10 | ···/˘/˘·˘/ |
| Hear, now, and judge, O ye People of the Jungle,-- | 12 | ······/˘··/˘ |
| Answer, who shall turn him--who shall stay? | 9 | /˘······· |
| Man goes to Man! He is weeping in the Jungle: | 12 | ······/˘··/˘ |
| He that was our Brother sorrows sore! | 10 | ···/˘/˘/˘· |
| Man goes to Man! (Oh, we loved him in the Jungle!) | 12 | ··········/˘ |
| To the Man-Trail where we may not follow more. | 11 | ········/˘· |
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.