Hobart
Man's love first found me; man's hate made me Hell;For my babes' sake I cleansed those infamies.Earnest for leave to live and labour well,God flung me peace and ease.
About this text
Hobart 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, Hobart, in Verses 1889–1896 (1889–1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #323, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/kipling-verses/hobart.html, id L16805.
Form and metre
Hobart is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. The lines average 8.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 hellA · infamiesB · wellA · easeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Man's love first found me; man's hate made me Hell; | 10 | ·········· |
| For my babes' sake I cleansed those infamies. | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Earnest for leave to live and labour well, | 10 | /˘·····/·· |
| God flung me peace and ease. | 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.