“The Duck and the Kangaroo” Introduction

• "The Duck and the Kangaroo" is a nonsense poem by Edward Lear. It was first published in Lear's 1870 collection, Nonsense Songs. The poem depicts a dialogue between a pond-bound duck and the kangaroo who represents the duck's greatest chance at freedom. The duck persuades the kangaroo to take the duck around the world on its back. While "The Duck and the Kangaroo" does not share the structure or the precise meter of Lear's limericks, his greatest claim to fame, the poem includes Lear's signature wordplay and his use of anthropomorphism, in which he gives animal characters very human traits and interactions).

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“The Duck and the Kangaroo” Summary

• The Duck exclaims to the kangaroo that it is very impressed with the kangaroo's ability to hop over land and water, seemingly without the need to stop. The Duck explains that its own life in the pond is boring and that it wants to explore the world. It could fulfill its dream if it could hop like the Kangaroo.

  The Duck asks the Kangaroo for a ride on the Kangaroo's back. The Duck promises it would sit still and only quack all day. The Duck proposes traveling to places like the Dee and the Jelly Bo Lee, crossing land and water in the process. The Duck repeats its polite plea for a ride on the Kangaroo's back.

  The Kangaroo explains to the Duck that it will need to consider the Duck's proposal. While it might be a source of good luck for the Kangaroo, the Kangaroo does have just one concern: to speak plainly, the Duck's wet, cold feet might make give the Kangaroo rheumatism (joint inflammation) if they are on the Kangaroo's back.

  The Duck explains that it has thought of this concern already and has purchased four pairs of warm socks that fit its webbed feet well. The Duck has also purchased a cloak to stay warm and plans to smoke a cigar every day, all so that it may ride along with its dear friend, the Kangaroo.

  The Kangaroo announces that it's ready to leave that night. The Kangaroo urges the Duck to sit on the end of the Kangaroo's tail to achieve the best balance possible. The Duck and the Kangaroo take off hopping and they travel around the world three times. There is no one as happy as the Duck and the Kangaroo.

“The Duck and the Kangaroo” Themes

• 

  Friendship and Compromise

  Lear's poem focuses on the relationship between the Duck and the Kangaroo, as the Duck convinces the Kangaroo to carry the duck on its back. The Kangaroo’s willingness to accept this unlikely companion and the duck’s eagerness to ensure the Kangaroo’s comfort under this arrangement paves the way for the fully-blossomed friendship of the final stanza, in which the two hop “the whole world three times round,” none so happy as this odd couple. Through their relationship, the poem suggests the ability of friendship to transcend any and all difference—so long as friends are willing to compromise and support each other.

  The Duck’s pitch to join the Kangaroo evolves over the course of the poem, shifting from focusing solely on its own wants to making a case for why it would be a worthy companion. At the start, the Duck expresses its desire to ride on the Kangaroo’s back as stemming from envy of the Kangaroo’s abilities: “I wish I could hop like you! … Please give me a ride on your back!” As the poem continues, however, the duck offers arguments for why the Kangaroo should accept the Duck’s proposition: “I would sit quite still, and say nothing but ‘Quack.’”

  By the fourth stanza, the Duck has somewhat changed its tune further still, suggesting that its eagerness to climb aboard to the Kangaroo’s back is not simply because the Duck wants to see the world but also “to follow my own dear true / Love of a Kangaroo.” Rather than simply using the Kangaroo as a vehicle to get out of the pond, the duck now argues that the Kangaroo is a “dear true love.” This all suggests that the duck understands that friendship is about more than personal fulfillment, and depends on a genuine appreciation of another person (or, in this case, animal!).

  Indeed, in “The Duck and the Kangaroo,” friends are willing to make concessions to support one another. At the start of the poem, the Kangaroo fears that the Duck’s proposed plan will be parasitic: in other words, the duck will benefit, but the Kangaroo will only catch a cold. Yet not only is the Duck willing to accommodate the Kangaroo’s need for a dry back, but the Duck has already thought ahead to the Kangaroo’s comfort, purchasing socks to keep the Kangaroo’s back warm. The Duck also plans to bring along a cloak and cigars to supplement the warmth of the socks. The Kangaroo, meanwhile, is willing to make an even bigger change in plans to help the Duck: the Kangaroo ultimately agrees to carry the Duck on its tail as they travel around the world. The Kangaroo even instructs the Duck on how best to maintain its balance as they travel, reflecting the Kangaroo’s similar willingness to consider the needs of someone else.

  By the end of the poem, both animals are deliriously happy with the arrangement and in one another’s company, each benefitting from the companionship. As the Kangaroo says, “To balance me well, dear Duck, sit steady!”: the two animals, despite their differences, can now balance each other on their shared journey specifically because they have taken care to consider the other’s needs. That both the Duck and the Kangaroo ultimately find great joy in their partnership reflects the value of friendship—and, it follows, of being willing to compromise.

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• 

  Wanderlust and Freedom

  The Duck makes a momentous proposal to the Kangaroo—that is, to ride on the Kangaroo’s back— because it longs for an escape from its home pond. The Duck recognizes that the Kangaroo, because of its physical abilities, has been able to explore the world, and the Duck longs to experience that liberty. The world beyond the "nasty pond" comes to represent that ultimate freedom. As such, until the Kangaroo empowers the Duck to leave the pond, the Duck cannot be truly free. Only by having the freedom of movement and the opportunity to see the world can the Duck’s longings—or the longings of any confined and constrained person (or talking animal)—be fulfilled.

  The beginning of the poem sets up the experiences of the Duck and the Kangaroo in opposition to one another: the Duck’s “life is a bore in this nasty pond” and it never gets to leave its environment, while the Kangaroo has the ability to hop “over the fields and the water too ... out in the world beyond.” The Kangaroo has the unfettered liberty of journeying as it pleases, while the Duck—trapped by its own physical limitations—can only dream of that freedom.

  In the second stanza, the Duck imagines what it would be like to travel with the Kangaroo, hoping that they will journey “to the Dee, and the Jelly Bo Lee, / Over the land, and over the sea.” This language echoes the Duck’s description of the Kangaroo in the opening stanza ("Good gracious! how you hop! / Over the fields and the water too"), demonstrating the Duck’s desire for a way out of the pond that will let it overcome all boundaries, whether land or sea.

  Both characters find ultimate happiness when they are able to see the world together. In the final stanza, the pair have “hopped the whole world three times round,” the Duck living its dream of traveling beyond the pond and experience genuine freedom for the first time.

  It's worth noting that the poet’s own nomadic lifestyle may undergird the Duck’s desire to see the world: Lear traveled throughout Europe, predominantly as a landscape painter, from the age of 25 in 1837 until he settled in Italy in 1880. The Duck’s fierce desire to “go out in the world beyond” suggests the poet’s own yearning for an escape from the “nasty pond” where he grew up.

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Duck and the Kangaroo”

• Lines 1-4

  Said the Duck to the Kangaroo,
      ‘Good gracious! how you hop!
  Over the fields and the water too,
      As if you never would stop!

  The first line of “The Duck and the Kangaroo” instantly establishes the dialogue form that will continue throughout the poem, with the narratorial voice announcing who is speaking before handing the rest of the stanza over to the Duck’s own words.

  These opening lines launch the reader into the story in medias res—that is, right in the middle of the action. The characters receive no introduction, but Lear’s use of the definite article and proper nouns (“the” Duck and “the” Kangaroo) suggests that these will be the only representatives of their species present in the poem. The world is sculpted on a small scale in these opening lines—just two creatures in conversation with each other—even as the Duck longs to see the world expand.

  In these first lines, the Duck describes the Kangaroo’s perpetual motion. The use of caesura (the exclamation point in line 2) to break up the Duck’s first line emphasizes the Duck’s awe but also underscores the Duck’s central problem: unlike the Kangaroo, free to hop as it will, the duck constantly faces physical limitations that slow it down, represented, in this case, by the punctuation that immediately pauses the duck in its tracks. Meanwhile, the alliterative “Good gracious! How you hop!” creates a bouncing sensation (especially when read aloud), sonically depicting the Kangaroo’s action. These opening lines also set up the rhyme scheme that will continue for the rest of the poem (each stanza beginning with an ABAB rhyming pattern, in which alternating lines exhibit full, perfect rhymes).

  This clear rhyme scheme contributes to the poem's feeling rather like a nursery rhyme. This feeling is echoed by the meter—which is mostly, though not strictly, anapestic trimeter with some iambs tossed in throughout. Substitutions occur even in these first four lines of the poem:

  Said the Duck | to the Kang- | aroo,
  ‘Good gra- | cious how | you hop!
  Over the | fields and | the wa- | ter too,
  As if | you ne- | ver would stop!

  Note how the final foot of line 1 is actually an iamb ("aroo"), as are all the feet of line 2; this da-DUM rhythm comes into play at the same time that the Kangaroo is mentioned, and seems to reflect the hopping of the Kangaroo. Meanwhile, a dactyl opens line 3, with the initial, bold stress of "over" again subtly reflecting the content of the line: the Kangaroo boldly bounces over everything in its path, including the meter! This continues with the trochee of "fields and" before falling back into iambs (the water too, / As if you ne-") and finally finishing with the expected anapest ("-ver would stop!").

  Finally, note how line 3 also has an extra foot, making it a line of tetrameter. Again, this reflects the freedom of movement of the Kangaroo—whose hopping expands its world beyond that of the Duck's little pond, just as the meter of this line expands past the expected number of syllables.

• Lines 5-8

  My life is a bore in this nasty pond,
  And I long to go out in the world beyond!
      I wish I could hop like you!’
      Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.

  

  

• Lines 10-13

  ‘Please give me a ride on your back!’
      Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.
  ‘I would sit quite still, and say nothing but “Quack,”
      The whole of the long day through!

  

  

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• Lines 14-17

  And we’d go to the Dee, and the Jelly Bo Lee,
  Over the land, and over the sea;—
      Please take me a ride! O do!’
      Said the Duck to the Kangaroo.

  

  

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• Lines 18-21

  Said the Kangaroo to the Duck,
      ‘This requires some little reflection;
  Perhaps on the whole it might bring me luck,
      And there seems but one objection,

  

  

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• Lines 22-25

  Which is, if you’ll let me speak so bold,
  Your feet are unpleasantly wet and cold,
  And would probably give me the roo-
      Matiz!’ said the Kangaroo.

  

  

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• Lines 26-29

  Said the Duck, ‘As I sate on the rocks,
      I have thought over that completely,
  And I bought four pairs of worsted socks
      Which fit my web-feet neatly.

  

  

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• Lines 30-33

  And to keep out the cold I’ve bought a cloak,
  And every day a cigar I’ll smoke,
      All to follow my own dear true
      Love of a Kangaroo!’

  

  

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• Lines 35-38

  Said the Kangaroo, ‘I’m ready!
      All in the moonlight pale;
  But to balance me well, dear Duck, sit steady!
      And quite at the end of my tail!’

  

  

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• Lines 39-42

  So away they went with a hop and a bound,
  And they hopped the whole world three times round;
      And who so happy,—O who,
      As the Duck and the Kangaroo?.

  

  

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“The Duck and the Kangaroo” Symbols

• 

  The Pond

  The Duck's "nasty pond" represents the constraints that the Duck experiences as it longs to flee its environment and go out into the world beyond. The pond's nastiness registers as a product of the Duck's desire to be elsewhere: in other words, the pond is nasty precisely because it is the space that the Duck cannot escape, the symbol of the Duck's restricted existence. The Duck recognizes that its own physical limitations prevent it from leaving its boring pond life. For the Kangaroo, however, the pond is a space that can be both traversed and escaped, since the Kangaroo can travel over both land and water—and, therefore, the Kangaroo serves as the Duck's best chance to escape the pond's boundaries.

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“The Duck and the Kangaroo” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Alliteration

  Alliteration abounds in "The Duck and the Kangaroo," from the Duck's opening exclamation onward. The alliteration of the initial /h/ sound, when read aloud, conveys a bouncing quality that tends to accompany descriptions of the Kangaroo's hopping ("How you hop!" in the opening stanza and "Hopped the whole" and "who so happy" in the final stanza, as the Kangaroo and Duck journey together).

  Lear also uses alliteration to re-animate phrases that repeat throughout the poem: "'O do!' / Said the Duck" in stanza II and "Said the Duck, 'As I sate,'" in stanza IV allow the reader to hear the recurring "Said the Duck" in new ways, with, respectively, the sparks of the hard /d/ sound and the sibilance of the recurring /s/.

  Alliteration emerges most exuberantly in stanza IV, as the duck describes its preparations for the proposed journey: the overlapping /w/ and /f/ sounds in "worsted socks / Which fit my web-feet/ might suggest the Duck sonically tripping over itself with excitement about the lengths to which it's gone to consider the Kangaroo's need. There is also the sense of the Duck assembling all its ducks in a row, so to speak, with the three alliterative lines in a row (lines 28-30): both in purchasing items and lining up initial word sounds, the duck has everything in order.

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• Anthropomorphism

  

  
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• Assonance

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

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• Consonance

  

  

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• End-Stopped Line

  

  

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• Enjambment

  

  

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• Pun

  

  

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• Repetition

  

  

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• Diacope

  

  

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• Rhetorical Question

  

  

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"The Duck and the Kangaroo" Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

• The Dee and the Jelly Bo Lee
• Roo-matiz
• Sate
• Worsted

• "The Dee" and "the Jelly Bo Lee" are fictional locations invented by Lear in this poem.

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Duck and the Kangaroo”

• Form

  "The Duck and the Kangaroo," despite its tight metrical patterns and rhyme scheme, does not follow any traditional poetic form. That said, it does pay tribute to the anapestic (da-da-DUM: "Said the Duck / to the Kang") metrical lilt of Lear's most frequent verse form, the limerick.

  Lear divides the poem into five eight-line stanzas (a.k.a. octaves), each denoted with a Roman numeral above it. The consistent, reliable structure helps to amplify the poem's nonsensical elements: by maintaining a predictable meter and rhyme scheme, the unpredictable turns within the poem (namely its characters and content) register as greater surprises.

  For example, the Kangaroo's punning concern about contracting "the roo-matiz" in lines 23-24 is unexpected (both because the Kangaroo is anxious about rheumatism and because it is an invented word). As such, the way in which Lear nestles the word comfortably across the enjambment between lines 23-24 contrasts sharply with the discombobulation of the word and idea itself. (Lear also maintains a sense of stability and consistent structure by featuring lines that recur throughout with slight variation, like the opening, "Said the Duck to the Kangaroo," which resurfaces in various forms in lines 8, 10, 16, 17, 24, 25, and 33).

  Formally, "The Duck and the Kangaroo" bears closest resemblance to Lear's "The Quangle Wangle's Hat," which consists of a series of nine-line stanzas with similar meter and nearly identical rhyme scheme.

• Meter

  The most central rhythm of "The Duck and the Kangaroo" is the anapestic trimeter, as can be seen perfectly in line 25:

  Said the Duck, | 'As I sate | on the rocks,

  The anapest (da-da-DUM) may sound familiar to readers of Dr. Seuss, whose texts frequently feature it throughout. This meter isn't all that consistent, though, and very often one or more of the anapests in a line will be replaced by an iamb, as can be seen in line 5. Here, the first and fourth foot are iambs, while the second and third are anapests:

  My life | is a bore | in this nas- | ty pond,

  As this specific example also shows, the poem isn't consistently in trimeter either. While these trimeters guide the first four lines of each stanza, the fifth and sixth lines of each stanza tend to move into tetrameter. Take, for example, the second stanza's anapestic tetrameter of line 13—

  And we'd go | to the Dee, | and the Jel- | ly Bo Lee

  —or the final stanza's sixth line (line 38), which can be scanned as consisting of an anapest followed by three iambs (that said, whether or not we should stress "whole" or "world" is up for debate):

  And they hopped | the whole | world three | times round

  Both the anapest and the iamb help to create the lightly, bouncing sensation to match the actions of the Kangaroo. Since each metrical accent follows a less pronounced take-off (the first two syllables of the anapest or the first syllable of the iamb), that airier space allows the kangaroo to rise off the ground before settling on the moments of metrical emphasis.

  Occasional surprising twists to the meter seem to illustrate the text with a wink. In the opening stanza, line 6 lengthens the syllable count from all the lines that have come previously. Note the 11 syllables:

  And I long | to go out | in the world | beyond!

  As the Duck's vision of the world outside comes to the fore, the length of the line expands, too, with the anapestic meter seeming to take off in a soaring iamb on the word "beyond," as if the anapests give the Duck a running start to escape on the final foot. The Duck is brought back to earth with the bumpier, short landing of the reality of the next line:

  I wish | I could hop | like you!

  When the Kangaroo teaches the Duck how to sit steadily on the Kangaroo's tail, the meter momentarily wobbles as the Duck balances itself:

  But to bal- | ance me well | dear Duck, | sit steady!

  The sudden shift from anapest to iamb followed by the iamb with a feminine ending seems to conjure up the Duck finding its balance as the Kangaroo interjects its guidance.

• Rhyme Scheme

  Each stanza of "The Duck and the Kangaroo" has a relatively consistent rhyme scheme, with the first four lines alternating in and ABAB pattern, followed by a rhyming couplet, which is itself followed by another couplet, for a rhyme scheme that looks like:

  ABABCCDD

  In every stanza, the final line also ends with "kangaroo"—meaning that the second-to-last line of each stanza ends with a rhyme for "kangaroo" (in other words, the "DD" rhyme is the same /oo/ sound in every stanza).

  The clear, consistent rhyme scheme helps to create a sense of familiarity and predictability that makes the poem accessible to children but also sets up a contrast between the simplicity of the form and the sophistication of the characters.

  There are some variations, however. In the first stanza, lines 1 and 3—the pair of "A" lines in the scheme written out above (Kangaroo/too)—reappear in the final couplet (you/Kangaroo). In the second stanza, this same rhyme sound (/oo/) is repeated in the second and fourth lines (that is, where the "B" rhymes had appeared in the prior stanza). In other words, if we rewrote stanza I to reflect these repeated sounds, it would look like this:

  ABABCCAA

  By contrast, stanza II would be:

  ABABCCBB

  This movement of various versions of the opening phrase ("Said the Duck to the Kangaroo") suggests a playful shifting meant to surprise a reader who expects the title phrase to show up in the same place in each stanza.

  Lear also uses exclusively perfect rhymes except for the third stanza, in which he rhymes "roo," the first syllable of "roo-matiz" with "kangaroo": this is an example of an identical rhyme, a rhyme of two words or syllables that are sonically identical but may have different meanings (roo/roo). The use of this rhyme here emphasizes the wordplay between the matching syllables of "rheumatism" and "kangaroo" over the consistent rhyme scheme.

  Internal rhyme helps to convey the rhythm of hopping when the duck imagines that "we'd go to the Dee, and the Jelly Bo Lee." Internal rhyme also stresses the neat fit of the duck's new socks when its "web-feet" snuggle next to the rhyming first syllable "neatly."

“The Duck and the Kangaroo” Speaker

• The speaker appears to be an unidentified narrator with knowledge, perhaps omniscient, of the conversation and subsequent adventure of the Duck and the Kangaroo. The role of the speaker, for the first four stanzas, is simply to share the dialogue between the Duck and the Kangaroo and identify which animal speaks which words: in that sense, the first four stanzas function almost as an un-annotated play script.

  In the final stanza only, the speaker describes the journey of the Duck and the Kangaroo that follows their conversation. The speaker ends the poem by stepping out of the purely narratorial role, asking the reader rhetorically who is as happy as the Duck and the Kangaroo.

  The two animals, for their part, appear to be decidedly polite and well-spoken creatures. Lear uses anthropomorphism to make the fanciful tale allegorical and let these animal speakers relate a lesson to human readers.

“The Duck and the Kangaroo” Setting

• The first four stanzas of "The Duck and the Kangaroo" take place within the "nasty pond" where the Duck lives, an environment that the Duck finds unpleasant and confining. The Duck imagines other settings it might encounter while on a journey on the Kangaroo's back—including the fictional lands of the Dee and the Jelly Bo Lee. In the final stanza, the setting expands to traverse the entire globe as the Duck and the Kangaroo hope around the whole world three times. Through compromise and friendship, the Duck gets its wish to explore the world and the Kangaroo gets a companion. The expanding setting of the poem, then, reflects the thematic emphasis on friendship, wanderlust, and freedom, presenting the former as a means to the latter.

  Note also that the Dee and the Jelly Bo Lee are not real places. Lear has made them up, meaning they're unfamiliar to the reader. Such unfamiliarity helps convey the excitement and uncharted potential that the Duck feels to the reader.

Literary and Historical Context of “The Duck and the Kangaroo”

• Literary Context

  "The Duck and the Kangaroo" appeared originally in a compilation of Edward Lear's poems called Nonsense Songs in 1870. The poem was published alongside "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat," a similar example of nonsense anthropomorphic poetry. Although Lear hoped to be best known for his visual art, he distinguished himself most dramatically for his multitude of limericks. While the limerick was not created by Lear himself, he popularized and expanded the form, most famously in A Book of Nonsense, first published in 1846.

  Both Lear's limericks and nonsense poetry find inspiration in English nursery rhymes which originated in the 17th century. Lear's closest contemporary and heir apparent in nonsense poetry was Lewis Carroll: "Jabberwocky" and "The Walrus and the Carpenter" were published within the text of Through the Looking-Glass, or What Alice Found There in 1871, a year after Nonsense Songs. In the 20th century, the clear impact of Lear's writing could be found in the works of Dr. Seuss and Ogden Nash.

  The Duck's world-hopping ambition might also reflect the wanderlust of literary characters emerging in prose at the same time of Lear's Nonsense Songs. In the same year of the collection's publication, Jules Verne release two science fiction novels, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Around the Moon.

  Historical Context

  The vision of world travel as the physical manifestation of the Duck's desire for freedom may have been distinctly personal for Lear: he, too, traveled the world, spending time in Jerusalem, Paris, Corsica, and San Remo in the years leading up to the poem's publication. Even so, that personal longing could never have been satisfied without the public industrial sea change occurring in Lear's lifetime.

  The boom in rail travel—both within England, internationally, and even transcontinentally, allowing travel from Europe to Asia—made it possible for Lear to lead a far-flung nomadic lifestyle. The Kangaroo's astounding physical ability to hop "the whole world three times round" appears to mirror the recent, and ever-expanding, possibilities for travelers to "go out in the world beyond" like never before. Even if the Kangaroo's hopping prowess seems exaggerated for the animal kingdom, at the time of the poem's composition, such a feat was now becoming close to achievable by humans, and Lear himself would take full advantage of the ability to ride on the back of this new technology.

More “The Duck and the Kangaroo” Resources

• External Resources

  • "The Duck and the Kangaroo" Read Aloud — Listen to a reading of the entire poem.

  • Nonsense Songs — Project Gutenberg — In this digital version of the original 1870 book, read "The Duck and the Kangaroo" and the poems and stories with which it first appeared. See Lear's illustrations that appeared with the poem in its first printing.

  • "The Duck and the Kangaroo" Song — Listen to the poem set to music (though note that this song includes only stanzas I, II, and V).

  • Nonsense Verse Activities — This article contains an outline of various lesson plans and activities that can be used to explore nonsense verse (by authors like Lear and Lewis Carroll) further.

  • Edward Lear Biography from the Poetry Foundation — Learn about the development of Lear's poetry over the decades, the connections between his visual art and his poetry, and the impact of his wandering lifestyle on his work.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by Edward Lear

  • The Dong with a Luminous Nose

  • The Owl and the Pussy-Cat