Love Between Brothers and Sisters
Whatever brawls disturb the street,There should be peace at home;Where sisters dwell and brothers meet,Quarrels should never come.
Birds in their little nests agree;And ’tis a shameful sight,When children of one familyFall out and chide and fight.
Words in this poem
- dwell v. i.
- To delay; to linger. [OE. dwellen, dwelien, to err, linger, AS. dwellan to deceive, hinder, delay, dwelian to err; akin to Icel. dvelja to delay, tarry, Sw. dväljas to dwell, Dan. dv]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Love Between Brothers and Sisters 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, Love Between Brothers and Sisters, in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/love-between-brothers-and-sisters.html, id L25170.
Form and metre
Love Between Brothers and Sisters is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
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 ABAB streetA · homeB · meetA · comeB
- 2 ABAB agreeA · sightB · familyA · fightB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Whatever brawls disturb the street, | 8 | ·/˘·˘/·· |
| There should be peace at home; | 6 | ······ |
| Where sisters dwell and brothers meet, | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Quarrels should never come. | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| Birds in their little nests agree; | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| And ’tis a shameful sight, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| When children of one family | 8 | ·/˘··/˘˘ |
| Fall out and chide and fight. | 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.