Tod's Amendment
Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail,A spectre at my door,Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail--I shall but love you more,Who, from Death's House returning, give me stillOne moment's comfort in my matchless ill.
Words in this poem
- spectre n.
- Something preternaturally visible; an apparition; a ghost; a phantom. [F. spectre, fr. L. spectrum an appearance, image, specter, fr. specere to look. See Spy, and cf. Spectrum.]
- 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
Tod's Amendment 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, Tod's Amendment, in Songs from Books (1912), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #15529, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-songs-from-books/tod-s-amendment.html, id L20296.
Form and metre
Tod's Amendment is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCC. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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 ABABCC wailA · doorB · failA · moreB · stillC · illC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Not though you die to-night, O Sweet, and wail, | 10 | ·········· |
| A spectre at my door, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Shall mortal Fear make Love immortal fail-- | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| I shall but love you more, | 6 | ······ |
| Who, from Death's House returning, give me still | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
| One moment's comfort in my matchless ill. | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
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.