Screw-Gun Mules
As me and my companions were scrambling up a hill,The path was lost in rolling stones, but we went forward still;For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,And it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to spare!
Good luck to every sergeant, then, that lets us pick our road!Bad luck to all the driver-men that cannot pack a load!For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere,And it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to spare!
Words in this poem
- scrambling a.
- Confused and irregular; awkward; scambling.
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Screw-Gun Mules 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, Screw-Gun Mules, in Songs from Books (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15529, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-songs-from-books/screw-gun-mules.html, id L20362.
Form and metre
Screw-Gun Mules is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB.
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 AABB hillA · stillA · everywhereB · spareB
- 2 AABB roadA · loadA · everywhereB · spareB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| As me and my companions were scrambling up a hill, | 13 | ····˘/˘·/˘··· |
| The path was lost in rolling stones, but we went forward still; | 14 | ·····/˘····/˘· |
| For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere, | 15 | ···/˘·······/˘· |
| And it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to spare! | 17 | ··/˘/··/˘········ |
| Good luck to every sergeant, then, that lets us pick our road! | 14 | ···/˘/˘·····/· |
| Bad luck to all the driver-men that cannot pack a load! | 13 | ·····/··˘/··· |
| For we can wriggle and climb, my lads, and turn up everywhere, | 15 | ···/˘·······/˘· |
| And it's our delight on a mountain height, with a leg or two to spare! | 17 | ··/˘/··/˘········ |
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.