Calcutta
Me the Sea-captain loved, the River built,Wealth sought and Kings adventured life to hold.Hail, England! I am Asia -- Power on silt,Death in my hands, but Gold!
Words in this poem
- wealth n.
- Weal; welfare; prosperity; good. [OE. welthe, from wele; cf. D. weelde luxury. See Weal prosperity.]
- silt n.
- Mud or fine earth deposited from running or standing water. [OE. silte gravel, fr. silen to drain, E. sile; probably of Scand. origin; cf. Sw. sila, prob. akin to AS. seón to filter, sigan to fall, sink, cause to sink, G.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Calcutta 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, Calcutta, in Verses 1889–1896 (1889–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #323, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-verses/calcutta.html, id L16793.
Form and metre
Calcutta is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. The lines average 9.0 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 builtA · holdB · siltA · goldB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Me the Sea-captain loved, the River built, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Wealth sought and Kings adventured life to hold. | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
| Hail, England! I am Asia -- Power on silt, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/·· |
| Death in my hands, but Gold! | 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.