A New Hymn
Sing a song of men’s pyjamas,Half-past-six has got a pair,And he’s wearing them this evening,And he’s looking such a dear.
Sing a song of frocks with pocketsI have got one, it is so’sI can use my ’nitial hankiesEvery time I blow my nose.
About this text
A New Hymn 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 New Hymn, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59276, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/mansfield-poems/a-new-hymn.html, id L27630.
Form and metre
A New Hymn is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other poems in trochaic 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 -A-A pyjamas · pairA · evening · dearA
- 2 -AAA pockets · so'sA · hankiesA · noseA
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sing a song of men’s pyjamas, | 8 | ········ |
| Half-past-six has got a pair, | 7 | ······· |
| And he’s wearing them this evening, | 8 | ··/˘··/˘ |
| And he’s looking such a dear. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Sing a song of frocks with pockets | 8 | ······/˘ |
| I have got one, it is so’s | 7 | ······· |
| I can use my ’nitial hankies | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Every time I blow my nose. | 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.