Growing Up
I’ve got shoes with grown up laces,I’ve got knickers and a pair of braces,I’m all ready to run some races.Who’s coming out with me?
I’ve got a nice new pair of braces,I’ve got shoes with new brown lacesI know wonderful paddly places.Who’s coming out with me?
Every morning my new grace is,“Thank you, God, for my nice bracesI can tie my new brown laces.”Who’s coming out with me?
Words in this poem
- thank n.
- A expression of gratitude; an acknowledgment expressive of a sense of favor or kindness received; obligation, claim, or desert, or gratitude; -- now generally used in the plural. [AS. Þanc, Þonc, thanks, favor, thought; akin to OS. thank favor, pleasure, thanks, D. & G. dank thanks, Icel. Þ\'94kk, Dan. tak, Sw. tack, Goth. Þagks thanks; -]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Growing Up is in the public domain. This text is taken from When We Were Very Young, Project Gutenberg ebook #70271; 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, Growing Up, in When We Were Very Young (1924), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70271, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/milne-when-we-were-very-young/growing-up.html, id L27216.
Form and metre
Growing Up is 12 lines in 3 stanzas of 4 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 78%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in trochaic 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 AAA- lacesA · bracesA · racesA · me
- 2 AAA- bracesA · lacesA · placesA · me
- 3 AAA- isA · bracesA · lacesA · me
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I’ve got shoes with grown up laces, | 8 | ······/˘ |
| I’ve got knickers and a pair of braces, | 10 | ··/˘····/˘ |
| I’m all ready to run some races. | 9 | ··/˘···/˘ |
| Who’s coming out with me? | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| I’ve got a nice new pair of braces, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| I’ve got shoes with new brown laces | 8 | ······/˘ |
| I know wonderful paddly places. | 9 | ··/˘˘··/˘ |
| Who’s coming out with me? | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Every morning my new grace is, | 8 | /˘/˘···· |
| “Thank you, God, for my nice braces | 8 | ······/˘ |
| I can tie my new brown laces.” | 8 | ······/˘ |
| Who’s coming out with me? | 6 | ·/˘··· |
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.