Gunga Din

Despite being rigorously structured and carefully metered, “Gunga Din” sounds casual, informal—like a person talking. 

The poem is divided into five 17-line stanzas that follow the chronological order typical of a narrative. Kipling creates a subtle patterning for rhymes that is consistent without being insistent. The rhyme scheme is AABCCBDDEFFEGGFGGHG, a back-and-forth rhyming pattern in which every sixth line echoes a word from a previous triplet—bookends that echo the poem’s framing device of a speaker looking back. The rhyme scheme mimics the vehicle of memory, with the speaker moving back and forth in time as he retells the story of the water-bearer. 

To create the effect of the speaker talking to his buddies, the meter reflects conversational rhythms, avoiding a singsong approach. Kipling alternates lines of eight syllables (iambic tetrameter) with lines of six syllables (iambic trimeter). Each stanza closes with a quintain in which one or more lines actually has ten syllables. This metric variation, along with enjambment (lines that move into the next line without end-punctuation), gives the poem its immediacy and encourages recitation that seems unforced.