A Joyful Song of Five
Come, let us all sing very highAnd all sing very loudAnd keep on singing in the streetUntil there’s quite a crowd;
And keep on singing in the houseAnd up and down the stairs;Then underneath the furnitureLet’s all play Polar bears;
And crawl about with doormats on,And growl and howl and squeak,Then in the garden let us flyAnd play at hide and seek;
And “Here we gather Nuts and May,”“I wrote a Letter” too,“Here we go round the Mulberry Bush,”“The Child who lost its shoe”;
And every game we ever played.And then—to stay alive—Let’s end with lots of Birthday CakeBecause to-day you’re five.
Words in this poem
- crawl v. i.
- To move slowly by drawing the body along the ground, as a worm; to move slowly on hands and kness; to creep. [Dan. kravle, or Icel. krafla, to paw, scrabble with the hands; akin to Sw. kr to crawl; cf. LG. krabbeln, D. krabbelen to scratch.]
- squeak v. i.
- To utter a sharp, shrill cry, usually of short duration; to cry with an acute tone, as an animal; or, to make a sharp, disagreeable noise, as a pipe or quill, a wagon wheel, a door; to creak. [Probably of imitative origin; cf. Sw. sqväka to croak, Icel. skvakka to give a sound as of water shaken in a bottle.]
- wrote v. i.
- To root with the snout. See 1st Root. [OE. wroten. See 1st Root.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Joyful Song of Five is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #59276; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Katherine Mansfield, A Joyful Song of Five, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59276, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/mansfield-poems/a-joyful-song-of-five.html, id L27618.
Form and metre
A Joyful Song of Five is 20 lines in 5 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in common measure.
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 -A-A high · loudA · street · crowdA
- 2 -A-A house · stairsA · furniture · bearsA
- 3 -A-A on · squeakA · fly · seekA
- 4 -A-A may · tooA · bush · shoeA
- 5 -A-A played · aliveA · cake · fiveA
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Come, let us all sing very high | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And all sing very loud | 6 | ···/˘· |
| And keep on singing in the street | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Until there’s quite a crowd; | 6 | ······ |
| And keep on singing in the house | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And up and down the stairs; | 6 | ······ |
| Then underneath the furniture | 8 | ··˘/·/˘˘ |
| Let’s all play Polar bears; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| And crawl about with doormats on, | 8 | ·····/·· |
| And growl and howl and squeak, | 6 | ······ |
| Then in the garden let us fly | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And play at hide and seek; | 6 | ······ |
| And “Here we gather Nuts and May,” | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| “I wrote a Letter” too, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| “Here we go round the Mulberry Bush,” | 9 | ·····/·˘· |
| “The Child who lost its shoe”; | 6 | ······ |
| And every game we ever played. | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And then—to stay alive— | 6 | ····˘/ |
| Let’s end with lots of Birthday Cake | 8 | ·····/·· |
| Because to-day you’re five. | 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.