Moral
Hey diddle diddlety,Cat and the Fiddlety,Maidens of England take caution by she!Let love and suicideNever tempt you aside,And always remember to take the door-key.
Words in this poem
- diddle v. i.
- To totter, as a child in walking. Quarles. [Cf. Daddle.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Moral is in the public domain. This text is taken from Ballads, Project Gutenberg ebook #2732; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Makepeace Thackeray, Moral, in Ballads (1849–1855), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #2732, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/thackeray-ballads/moral.html, id L10415.
Form and metre
Moral is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes AABCCB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 82% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.5 syllables.
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 AABCCB diddletyA · fiddletyA · sheB · suicideC · asideC · keyB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hey diddle diddlety, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| Cat and the Fiddlety, | 6 | ······ |
| Maidens of England take caution by she! | 10 | /˘·/˘·/˘·· |
| Let love and suicide | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Never tempt you aside, | 6 | /˘··˘/ |
| And always remember to take the door-key. | 11 | ·/·˘/˘····· |
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.