Seal Lullaby

Fiction | Poem | Middle Grade | Published in 1900

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Anapestic tetrameter, Kipling’s form in “Seal Lullaby,” may evoke a particular response in contemporary readers, as it echoes the cadence of nursery rhymes and comedic verse. Each metrical foot begins with two unaccented syllables and ends with an accented one.

Readers in an earlier era would have had a broader context for the galloping rhythm, though its rocking effect often provided lullabies and nursery rhymes with both soothing and celebratory beats. Popular works like Clement Clark Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas” and several works by Lewis Carroll also use this meter.

Kipling’s lines begin with a catalectic foot, missing the first unaccented beat. These introductory feet give an additional metrical sense of separation between lines. Internal rhyme, “where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow” (Line 5), heightens the swinging effect of the anapests.

Alliteration

Alliterative sections throughout the poem also highlight the strong metrical pattern and enhance the lullaby’s soothing effect. Repeated bilabial “b” and “m” sounds weave through the first two lines (my baby, behind, black). Liquid “l” sounds mix with whispering “st” sounds in lines 4 and 5 (rest, hollows, rustle, billow, soft, pillow). The last two lines provide the densest sounds, with cross alliteration and internal rhyme: “storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee” (Line 7) and “asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas” (Line 8). The “w” sounds in “weary wee flipperling” in Line 6 return at the end of Line 8, where the young seal rocks in the “slow-swinging” waves. The coming and going of rhythm and alliteration in the poem mirrors the ebb and flow of the seas in which the seals rest.

Anthropomorphism

“Seal Lullaby” exhibits anthropomorphism, the transfer of human traits to nonhuman objects. The poem portrays a mother and baby seal who display human attributes in their actions and relationship, while also demonstrating traits belonging more specifically to seals. This lullaby reverses the metaphor of many sea-oriented cradle songs. Here, the “pillow” in line 5 works as a metaphor, since seals do not sleep on a pillow, while the rocking waves would be a place a seal would actually sleep, rather than the waves serving as a metaphor for a rocking cradle. Anthropomorphism differs from personification, a device in which traits or abstract ideas are embodied in human form.