Analysis of The River's Tale
Rudyard Kipling 1865 (Mumbai) – 1936 (London)
Twenty bridges from Tower to Kew--
(Twenty bridges or twenty-two)--
Wanted to know what the River knew,
For they were young, and the Thames was old
And this is the tale that River told:--
"I walk my beat before London Town,
Five hours up and seven down.
Up I go till I end my run
At Tide-end-town, which is Teddington.
Down I come with the mud in my hands
And plaster it over the Maplin Sands.
But I'd have you know that these waters of mine
Were once a branch of the River Rhine,
When hundreds of miles to the East I went
And England was joined to the Continent.
"I remember the bat-winged lizard-birds,
The Age of Ice and the mammoth herds,
And the giant tigers that stalked them down
Through Regent's Park into Camden Town.
And I remember like yesterday
The earliest Cockney who came my way,
When he pushed through the forest that lined the Strand,
With paint on his face and a club in his hand.
He was death to feather and fin and fur.
He trapped my beavers at Westminster.
He netted my salmon, he hunted my deer,
He killed my heron off Lambeth Pier.
He fought his neighbour with axes and swords,
Flint or bronze, at my upper fords,
While down at Greenwich, for slaves and tin,
The tall Phoenician ships stole in,
And North Sea war-boats, painted and gay,
Flashed like dragon-flies, Erith way;
And Norseman and Negro and Gaul and Greek
Drank with the Britons in Barking Creek,
And life was gay, and the world was new,
And I was a mile across at Kew!
But the Roman came with a heavy hand,
And bridged and roaded and ruled the land,
And the Roman left and the Danes blew in--
And that's where your history-books begin!"
Scheme | AAABB CCXCDDEEXX FFCCGGHHIIJJKKLLGGMMAAHHLL |
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Poetic Form | |
Metre | 101011011 10101101 101110101 110100111 011011101 111101101 11010101 11111111 1111111 111101011 010110011 11111111011 010110101 1101110111 0101110100 1010011101 011100101 0010101111 11101101 01010110 0100101111 11110101101 11111001011 1111100101 11110110 11011011011 111101101 111111001 11111101 111101101 01010110 011111001 1110111 010100101 110100101 011100111 011010111 1010110101 01010101 0010100110 0111100101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,601 |
Words | 309 |
Sentences | 12 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 10, 26 |
Lines Amount | 41 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 419 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 101 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 14, 2023
- 1:33 min read
- 214 Views
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"The River's Tale" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 20 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/33546/the-river%27s-tale>.
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