The Man with the Wooden Leg
There was a man lived quite near us;He had a wooden leg and a goldfinch in a green cage.His name was Farkey Anderson,And he’d been in a war to get his leg.We were very sad about him,Because he had such a beautiful smileAnd was such a big man to live in a very small house.When he walked on the road his leg did not matter so much;But when he walked in his little houseIt made an ugly noise.Little Brother said his goldfinch sang the loudest of all birds,So that he should not hear his poor legAnd feel too sorry about it.
About this text
The Man with the Wooden Leg 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, The Man with the Wooden Leg, in Poems (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #59276, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/mansfield-poems/the-man-with-the-wooden-leg.html, id L27574.
Form and metre
The Man with the Wooden Leg is 13 lines in a single stanza.
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--B-B--A- us · cage · anderson · legA · him · smile · houseB · much · houseB · noise · birds · legA · it
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 |
|---|---|---|
| There was a man lived quite near us; | 8 | ········ |
| He had a wooden leg and a goldfinch in a green cage. | 14 | ···/˘···/····· |
| His name was Farkey Anderson, | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| And he’d been in a war to get his leg. | 10 | ·········· |
| We were very sad about him, | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| Because he had such a beautiful smile | 9 | ······/˘· |
| And was such a big man to live in a very small house. | 14 | ··········/˘·· |
| When he walked on the road his leg did not matter so much; | 14 | ··········/˘·· |
| But when he walked in his little house | 9 | ······/˘· |
| It made an ugly noise. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Little Brother said his goldfinch sang the loudest of all birds, | 15 | /˘/˘··/···/˘··· |
| So that he should not hear his poor leg | 9 | ········· |
| And feel too sorry about it. | 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.