The Life and Poetry of James Beattie
"Southward a mountain rose with easy swell,Whose long, long groves eternal murmur made."
"the evening star.And from embattled clouds emerging slow,Cynthia came riding in her silver car:And hoary mountain cliffs shone faintly from afar."
Words in this poem
- embattled a.
- Having indentations like a battlement.
- hoary a.
- White or whitish."The hoary willows."
- afar adv.
- At, to, or from a great distance; far away; -- often used with from preceding, or off following; as, he was seen from afar; I saw him afar off. [Pref. a-.(for on or of) + far.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Life and Poetry of James Beattie is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes, Project Gutenberg ebook #8695; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: James Beattie, The Life and Poetry of James Beattie, in The Minstrel and Other Poems (1771–1774), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8695, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/beattie-minstrel/the-life-and-poetry-of-james-beattie.html, id L18628.
Form and metre
The Life and Poetry of James Beattie is 6 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 89% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.3 syllables.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 2 A-AA starA · slow · carA · afarA
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| "Southward a mountain rose with easy swell, | 10 | /˘·/˘··/˘· |
| Whose long, long groves eternal murmur made." | 10 | ····˘/˘/˘· |
| "the evening star. | 4 | ·/˘· |
| And from embattled clouds emerging slow, | 10 | ··˘/˘·˘/˘· |
| Cynthia came riding in her silver car: | 10 | /˘·/˘··/˘· |
| And hoary mountain cliffs shone faintly from afar." | 12 | ·/˘/˘··/˘·˘/ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.