Singing
Of speckled eggs the birdie singsAnd nests among the trees;The sailor sings of ropes and thingsIn ships upon the seas.
The children sing in far Japan,The children sing in Spain;The organ with the organ manIs singing in the rain.
Words in this poem
- birdie n.
- A pretty or dear little bird; -- a pet name.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Singing 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, Singing, in A Child's Garden of Verses (1885), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #136, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/stevenson-childs-garden/singing.html, id L07183.
Form and metre
Singing 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 99%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 38% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 singsA · treesB · thingsA · seasB
- 2 ABAB japanA · spainB · manA · rainB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Of speckled eggs the birdie sings | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| And nests among the trees; | 6 | ······ |
| The sailor sings of ropes and things | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| In ships upon the seas. | 6 | ······ |
| The children sing in far Japan, | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| The children sing in Spain; | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| The organ with the organ man | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Is singing in the rain. | 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.