The End
When I was One,I had just begun.
When I was Two,I was nearly new.
When I was Three,I was hardly Me.
When I was Four,I was not much more.
When I was Five,I was just alive.
But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever.So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever.
About this text
The End 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, The End, in Now We Are Six (1927), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70516, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/milne-now-we-are-six/the-end.html, id L27253.
Form and metre
The End is 12 lines in 6 stanzas of 2 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic 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 AA oneA · begunA
- 2 AA twoA · newA
- 3 AA threeA · meA
- 4 AA fourA · moreA
- 5 AA fiveA · aliveA
- 6 AA cleverA · everA
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 iambic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| When I was One, | 4 | ···· |
| I had just begun. | 5 | ···˘/ |
| When I was Two, | 4 | ···· |
| I was nearly new. | 5 | ··/˘· |
| When I was Three, | 4 | ···· |
| I was hardly Me. | 5 | ··/˘· |
| When I was Four, | 4 | ···· |
| I was not much more. | 5 | ····· |
| When I was Five, | 4 | ···· |
| I was just alive. | 5 | ···˘/ |
| But now I am Six, I'm as clever as clever. | 12 | ·······/˘·/˘ |
| So I think I'll be six now for ever and ever. | 11 | ········/·/ |
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.