Summer Afternoon
Six brown cows walk down to drink(All the little fishes blew bubbles at the may-fly).Splash goes the first as he comes to the brink,Swish go the tails of the five who follow. . . .Twelve brown cows bend drinking there(All the little fishes went waggle-tail, waggle-tail)—Six from the water and six from the air;Up and down the river darts a blue-black swallow.
Words in this poem
- brink n.
- The edge, margin, or border of a steep place, as of a precipice; a bank or edge, as of a river or pit; a verge; a border; as, the brink of a chasm. Also Fig. [Dan. brink edge, verge; akin to Sw. brink declivity, hill, Icel. brekka; cf. LG. brink a grassy hill, W. bryn hill, bryncyn hillock.]
- swish v. t.
- To flourish, so as to make the sound swish. Coleridge. [From the sound. Cf. Swash.]
- went n.
- Course; way; path; journey; direction.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Summer Afternoon 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, Summer Afternoon, in When We Were Very Young (1924), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70271, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/milne-when-we-were-very-young/summer-afternoon.html, id L27202.
Form and metre
Summer Afternoon is 8 lines in a single stanza.
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 A-ABC-CB drinkA · fly · brinkA · followB · thereC · tail · airC · swallowB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Six brown cows walk down to drink | 7 | ······· |
| (All the little fishes blew bubbles at the may-fly). | 13 | ··/˘/˘·/˘···· |
| Splash goes the first as he comes to the brink, | 10 | ·········· |
| Swish go the tails of the five who follow. . . . | 10 | ········/˘ |
| Twelve brown cows bend drinking there | 7 | ····/˘· |
| (All the little fishes went waggle-tail, waggle-tail)— | 13 | ··/˘/˘·/˘·/˘· |
| Six from the water and six from the air; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Up and down the river darts a blue-black swallow. | 12 | ····/˘····/˘ |
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.