Envoys
I To Willie and HenriettaII To My MotherIII To AuntieIV To MinnieV To My Name-ChildVI To Any Reader
Words in this poem
- auntie n.
- A familiar name for an aunt. In the southern United States a familiar term applied to aged negro women.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Envoys is in the public domain. This text is taken from A Child's Garden of Verses, Project Gutenberg ebook #136; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Louis Stevenson, Envoys, in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #136, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevenson-childs-garden/envoys.html, id L07172.
Form and metre
Envoys is 6 lines in a single verse paragraph. It is unrhymed, as far as the pronouncing dictionary can tell. The metre is trochaic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 93% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 5.5 syllables. 5 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in trochaic trimeter.
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.
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 trochaic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I To Willie and Henrietta | 9 | ··/˘··˘/˘ |
| II To My Mother | 5 | ···/˘ |
| III To Auntie | 4 | ··/˘ |
| IV To Minnie | 4 | ··/˘ |
| V To My Name-Child | 5 | ····· |
| VI To Any Reader | 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.