Buttercup Days
Where is Anne?Head above the buttercups,Walking by the stream,Down among the buttercups.Where is Anne?Walking with her man,Lost in a dream,Lost among the buttercups.
What has she got in that little brown head?Wonderful thoughts which can never be said.What has she got in that firm little fist of hers?Somebody's thumb, and it feels like Christopher's.
Where is Anne?Close to her man.Brown head, gold head,In and out the buttercups.
About this text
Buttercup Days is in the public domain. This text is taken from Now We Are Six, Project Gutenberg ebook #70516; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: A. A. Milne, Buttercup Days, in Now We Are Six (1927), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70516, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/milne-now-we-are-six/buttercup-days.html, id L27226.
Form and metre
Buttercup Days is 16 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is trochaic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 81%).
See other poems in trochaic dimeter.
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 ABCBAACB anneA · buttercupsB · streamC · buttercupsB · anneA · manA · dreamC · buttercupsB
- 2 AA-- headA · saidA · hers · christopher's
- 3 AA-- anneA · manA · head · buttercups
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 dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Where is Anne? | 3 | ··· |
| Head above the buttercups, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Walking by the stream, | 5 | /˘··· |
| Down among the buttercups. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Where is Anne? | 3 | ··· |
| Walking with her man, | 5 | /˘··· |
| Lost in a dream, | 4 | ···· |
| Lost among the buttercups. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| What has she got in that little brown head? | 10 | ······/˘·· |
| Wonderful thoughts which can never be said. | 8 | /˘···/·· |
| What has she got in that firm little fist of hers? | 12 | ·······/˘··· |
| Somebody's thumb, and it feels like Christopher's. | 10 | /˘˘·····/˘ |
| Where is Anne? | 3 | ··· |
| Close to her man. | 4 | ···· |
| Brown head, gold head, | 4 | ···· |
| In and out the buttercups. | 7 | ····/˘· |
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.