Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite
Let dogs delight to bark and bite,For God hath made them so;Let bears and lions growl and fight,For ’tis their nature too.
But, children, you should never letSuch angry passions rise;Your little hands were never madeTo tear each other’s eyes.
Words in this poem
- angry a.
- Troublesome; vexatious; rigorous. [See Anger.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems Every Child Should Know The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library, Project Gutenberg ebook #16436; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Mary E. Burt, Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite, in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/let-dogs-delight-to-bark-and-bite.html, id L25154.
Form and metre
Let Dogs Delight to Bark and Bite is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 98%).
See other poems in common measure.
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-A- biteA · so · fightA · too
- 2 -A-A let · riseA · made · eyesA
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Let dogs delight to bark and bite, | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| For God hath made them so; | 6 | ······ |
| Let bears and lions growl and fight, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| For ’tis their nature too. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| But, children, you should never let | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Such angry passions rise; | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Your little hands were never made | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| To tear each other’s eyes. | 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.