The Boy Who Never Told a Lie
Once there was a little boy,With curly hair and pleasant eye--A boy who always told the truth,And never, never told a lie.
And when he trotted off to school,The children all about would cry,“There goes the curly-headed boy--The boy that never tells a lie.”
And everybody loved him so,Because he always told the truth,That every day, as he grew up,’Twas said, “There goes the honest youth.”
And when the people that stood nearWould turn to ask the reason why,The answer would be always this:“Because he never tells a lie.”
About this text
The Boy Who Never Told a Lie 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, The Boy Who Never Told a Lie, in Poems Every Child Should Know (1904), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #16436, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/poems-every-child/the-boy-who-never-told-a-lie.html, id L25169.
Form and metre
The Boy Who Never Told a Lie is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 97%).
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 -A-A boy · eyeA · truth · lieA
- 2 -A-A school · cryA · boy · lieA
- 3 -A-A so · truthA · up · youthA
- 4 -A-A near · whyA · this · lieA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Once there was a little boy, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| With curly hair and pleasant eye-- | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| A boy who always told the truth, | 8 | ···/···· |
| And never, never told a lie. | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And when he trotted off to school, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The children all about would cry, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| “There goes the curly-headed boy-- | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| The boy that never tells a lie.” | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And everybody loved him so, | 8 | ·/˘·˘··· |
| Because he always told the truth, | 8 | ···/···· |
| That every day, as he grew up, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| ’Twas said, “There goes the honest youth.” | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| And when the people that stood near | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Would turn to ask the reason why, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The answer would be always this: | 8 | ·/˘··/·· |
| “Because he never tells a lie.” | 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.