Now We Are Six
What this poem is
Now We Are Six is a 1927 book of children's poetry by A. A. Milne, with illustrations by E. H. Shepard. It is the second collection of children's poems following Milne's When We Were Very Young, which was first published in 1924. The collection contains thirty-five poems, including eleven that feature Winnie-the-Pooh illustrations.
The final poem in the collection, "The End", is written in the voice of a six-year-old looking back at the immature first five years of his or her life, and concluding "But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever. / So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever." This conceit gives the book its title. The poem was subsequently republished under the title "Now We Are Six".
Adapted from the Wikipedia article “Now We Are Six” (revision 1360151697), used under CC BY-SA 4.0. Laurel's own notes and measurements are not from Wikipedia.
Measured across the book
Across its 1,195 lines, 94% of stressed syllables fall on the beat (95% interval 93% to 95%). Alliteration runs at 1.16 times what shuffling the words would give (0.28 observed against 0.24 expected). 26% of the lines have a feminine ending.
Baselines and intervals are described in the methods.
Contents
About this text
Public domain. Text from Now We Are Six, Project Gutenberg ebook #70516. Free to read, print, copy and reuse.