While the Billy Boils
Prose: Poetry:On the Track When I was KingOver the Sliprails Popular VersesJoe Wilson Humorous VersesJoe Wilson's Mates Winnowed Verses
Words in this poem
- humorous a.
- Moist; humid; watery. [Cf. L. humorosus, umorosus, moist. See Humor.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
While the Billy Boils is in the public domain. This text is taken from In the Days When the World Was Wide, and Other Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #214; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Lawson, While the Billy Boils, in In the Days When the World Was Wide (1896), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #214, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lawson-world-was-wide/while-the-billy-boils.html, id L26155.
Form and metre
While the Billy Boils is 5 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 --AAA poetry · king · versesA · versesA · versesA
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Prose: Poetry: | 4 | ·/˘˘ |
| On the Track When I was King | 7 | ······· |
| Over the Sliprails Popular Verses | 10 | ·····/˘˘/˘ |
| Joe Wilson Humorous Verses | 8 | ·/˘/˘˘/˘ |
| Joe Wilson's Mates Winnowed Verses | 8 | ·/˘·/·/˘ |
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.