The Morning Walk
When Anne and I go out a walk,We hold each other's hand and talkOf all the things we mean to doWhen Anne and I are forty-two.
And when we've thought about a thing,Like bowling hoops or bicycling,Or falling down on Anne's balloon,We do it in the afternoon.
Words in this poem
- bicycling n.
- The use of a bicycle; the act or practice of riding a bicycle.
- afternoon n.
- The part of the day which follows noon, between noon and evening.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Morning Walk 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 Morning Walk, in Now We Are Six (1927), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70516, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/milne-now-we-are-six/the-morning-walk.html, id L27246.
Form and metre
The Morning Walk is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See 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 AABB walkA · talkA · doB · twoB
- 2 AABB thingA · bicyclingA · balloonB · afternoonB
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 Anne and I go out a walk, | 8 | ········ |
| We hold each other's hand and talk | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Of all the things we mean to do | 8 | ········ |
| When Anne and I are forty-two. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And when we've thought about a thing, | 8 | ········ |
| Like bowling hoops or bicycling, | 9 | ·/˘··/·˘˘ |
| Or falling down on Anne's balloon, | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| We do it in the afternoon. | 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.