The Bronckhorst Divorce Case
A stone's throw out on either handFrom that well-ordered road we tread,And all the world is wild and strange;Churel and ghoul and Djinn and spriteShall bear us company to-night,For we have reached the Oldest LandWherein the powers of Darkness range.
Words in this poem
- ghoul n.
- An imaginary evil being among Eastern nations, which was supposed to feed upon human bodies. Moore. [Per. gh an imaginary sylvan demon, supposed to devour men and animals: cf. Ar. gh, F. goule.]
- sprite n.
- A spirit; a soul; a shade; also, an apparition. See Spright. [OE. sprit, F. esprit, fr. L. spiritus. See Spirit, and cf. Sprightly.]
- 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
The Bronckhorst Divorce Case 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, The Bronckhorst Divorce Case, in Songs from Books (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15529, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-songs-from-books/the-bronckhorst-divorce-case.html, id L20300.
Form and metre
The Bronckhorst Divorce Case is 7 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 A-BCCAB handA · tread · strangeB · spriteC · nightC · landA · rangeB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A stone's throw out on either hand | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| From that well-ordered road we tread, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And all the world is wild and strange; | 8 | ········ |
| Churel and ghoul and Djinn and sprite | 8 | ········ |
| Shall bear us company to-night, | 8 | ···/˘˘·· |
| For we have reached the Oldest Land | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Wherein the powers of Darkness range. | 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.