Ho! Ho!
But ki-ki-ri-kiBrings no rou-cou,No rou-cou-cou.
But no queen comesIn slipper green.
About this text
Ho! Ho! is in the public domain. This text is taken from Harmonium, Project Gutenberg ebook #78743; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Wallace Stevens, Ho! Ho!, in Harmonium (1923), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #78743, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevens-harmonium/ho-ho.html, id L01046.
Form and metre
Ho! Ho! is 5 lines in 2 stanzas. The lines average 4.2 syllables.
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 -AA ki · couA · couA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| But ki-ki-ri-ki | 5 | ····· |
| Brings no rou-cou, | 4 | ···· |
| No rou-cou-cou. | 4 | ···· |
| But no queen comes | 4 | ···· |
| In slipper green. | 4 | ·/˘· |
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.