Looking Forward
When I am grown to man's estateI shall be very proud and great,And tell the other girls and boysNot to meddle with my toys.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- meddle v. i.
- To mix; to mingle. [OE. medlen to mix, OF. medler, mesler, F. mêler, LL. misculare, a dim. fr. L. miscere to mix. Mix, and cf. Medley, Mellay.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Looking Forward 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, Looking Forward, in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #136, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevenson-childs-garden/looking-forward.html, id L07184.
Form and metre
Looking Forward is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 7.8 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 AABB estateA · greatA · boysB · toysB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| When I am grown to man's estate | 8 | ······˘/ |
| I shall be very proud and great, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And tell the other girls and boys | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Not to meddle with my toys. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
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.