The Goat
Between the waving tufts of jungle-grass,Up from the river as the twilight falls,Across the dust-beclouded plain they passOn to the village walls.
Great is the sword and mighty is the pen,But greater far the labouring ploughman's blade,For on its oxen and its husbandmenAn Empire's strength is laid.
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.]
- labouring a.
- That labors; performing labor; esp., performing coarse, heavy work, not requiring skill also, set apart for labor; as, laboring days.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Goat 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 Goat, in Songs from Books (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15529, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-songs-from-books/the-goat.html, id L20346.
Form and metre
The Goat is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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 ABAB grassA · fallsB · passA · wallsB
- 2 -A-A pen · bladeA · husbandmen · laidA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Between the waving tufts of jungle-grass, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Up from the river as the twilight falls, | 10 | ···/˘··/·· |
| Across the dust-beclouded plain they pass | 10 | ˘/········ |
| On to the village walls. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Great is the sword and mighty is the pen, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| But greater far the labouring ploughman's blade, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| For on its oxen and its husbandmen | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| An Empire's strength is laid. | 7 | ·/˘˘··· |
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.