Poetry for Students, Volume 31

there is no evidence to indicate that a hippopot-
amus would have any aesthetic opinion of
human beings’ looks or that one is even capable
of formulating such a judgment. Furthermore,
though hippopotamuses do show some sort of
attraction to one another for mating purposes, it
is presumably just a case of projecting human
thought processes onto the animal to claim that
their looks ‘‘delight’’ one another.

Rhyme
In each successive pair of lines in this poem, the
two end words rhyme with one another, creating
anaabbrhyme scheme. Nash’s strict adherence
to this simple rhyming pattern helps to establish
that he is writing from a lighthearted perspec-
tive, showing that even the poet himself is not
too serious about the poem’s message. In line 3,
for instance, his use of the wordgrimseems to be
an inappropriately strong way of expressing the
idea he is getting at: he is describing how a
human would feel about how hippopotamuses
view the human race, which might be baffling or

embarrassing at worst. Reading line 4, though,

shows that Nash chose such a bombastic word in

order to match its sound to the word that ends

the next line. If the ideas expressed in the poem

are chosen according to how they sound, the

implication is that the reader does not have to

take them very seriously.

The culmination of the poem’s rhyme

scheme comes in its final word: with the rhyming

pattern established, readers can expect the last

line to end with the hardisound, even though

the most proper grammar would dictate that

the standard plural form ‘‘hippopotamuses’’ be

used. The poet chooses to follow the rhyme

scheme to its comical conclusion, fairly flaunting

the grammar rules. By doing this, he shows that

the poem’s priorities lie with its spirit of fun.

Iambic Tetrameter

This poem strictly follows a set rhythmic and

metric pattern. The rhythm is iambic, meaning

that it is composed of two-syllable units with

every even-numbered syllable given greater stress

Hippopotamus(Image copyright K. West, 2009. Used under license from Shutterstock.com)

The Hippopotamus