The Three Foot Rule
William John Macquorn Rankine 1820 (Edinburgh) – 1872 (Glasgow)
When I was bound apprentice, and learned to use my hands,
Folk never talked of measures that came from foreign lands:
Now I'm a British Workman, too old to go to school;
So whether the chisel or file I hold, I'll stick to my three-foot rule.
Some talk of millimetres, and some of kilogrammes,
And some of decilitres, to measure beer and drams;
But I'm a British Workman, too old to go to school,
So by pounds I'll eat, and by quarts I'll drink, and I'll work by my three-foot rule.
A party of astronomers went measuring the earth,
And forty million metres they took to be its girth;
Five hundred million inches, though, go through from pole to pole;
So let's stick to inches, feet and yards, and the good old three-foot rule.
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 42 sec read
- 51 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABB AXBB CCXB |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 722 |
Words | 136 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4 |
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"The Three Foot Rule" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/40821/the-three-foot-rule>.
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