Cape Town
Hail! Snatched and bartered oft from hand to hand,I dream my dream, by rock and heath and pine,Of Empire to the northward. Ay, one landFrom Lion's Head to Line!
Words in this poem
- northward a.
- Toward the north; nearer to the north than to the east or west point. [AS. noredhweard.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Cape Town 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, Cape Town, in Verses 1889–1896 (1889–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #323, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-verses/cape-town.html, id L16801.
Form and metre
Cape Town 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 handA · pineB · landA · lineB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hail! Snatched and bartered oft from hand to hand, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| I dream my dream, by rock and heath and pine, | 10 | ·········· |
| Of Empire to the northward. Ay, one land | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| From Lion's Head to Line! | 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.