Bombay
Royal and Dower-royal, I the QueenFronting thy richest sea with richer hands --A thousand mills roar through me where I gleanAll races from all lands.
Words in this poem
- glean n.
- Cleaning; afterbirth. Holland.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Bombay is in the public domain. This text is taken from Verses 1889-1896, Project Gutenberg ebook #323; 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, Bombay, in Verses 1889–1896 (1889–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #323, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-verses/bombay.html, id L16792.
Form and metre
Bombay is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. The lines average 8.8 syllables.
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 queenA · handsB · gleanA · landsB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Royal and Dower-royal, I the Queen | 9 | /˘··/˘··· |
| Fronting thy richest sea with richer hands -- | 10 | /˘·/˘··/˘· |
| A thousand mills roar through me where I glean | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| All races from all lands. | 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.