Thrown Away
The World hath set its heavy yokeUpon the old white-bearded folkWho strive to please the King.God's mercy is upon the young,God's wisdom in the baby tongueThat fears not anything.
Words in this poem
- folk n.
- In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Thrown Away 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, Thrown Away, in Songs from Books (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15529, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-songs-from-books/thrown-away.html, id L20295.
Form and metre
Thrown Away is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes AABCCB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%).
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 AABCCB yokeA · folkA · kingB · youngC · tongueC · anythingB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The World hath set its heavy yoke | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Upon the old white-bearded folk | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Who strive to please the King. | 6 | ······ |
| God's mercy is upon the young, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| God's wisdom in the baby tongue | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| That fears not anything. | 6 | ···/˘· |
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.