Reply to the Above
For shame, dear friend, renounce this canting strain!What would'st thou have a good great man obtain?Place? titles? salary? a gilded chain?Or throne of corses which his sword had slain?Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends!Hath he not always treasures, always friends,The good great man? three treasures, LOVE, and LIGHT,And CALM THOUGHTS, regular as infant's breath:And three firm friends, more sure than day and night,HIMSELF, his MAKER, and the ANGEL DEATH!
Words in this poem
- canting a.
- Speaking in a whining tone of voice; using technical or religious terms affectedly; affectedly pious; as, a canting rogue; a canting tone. - Cant"ing*ly, adv.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Reply to the Above is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems of Coleridge, Project Gutenberg ebook #8208; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Reply to the Above, in Poems of Coleridge (1796–1817), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8208, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/coleridge-poems/reply-to-the-above.html, id L00390.
Form and metre
Reply to the Above is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 60% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%). 87% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables.
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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.
- 1 AAAABBCDCD strainA · obtainA · chainA · slainA · endsB · friendsB · lightC · breathD · nightC · deathD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| For shame, dear friend, renounce this canting strain! | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| What would'st thou have a good great man obtain? | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Place? titles? salary? a gilded chain? | 10 | ·/˘/˘˘·/˘· |
| Or throne of corses which his sword had slain? | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Greatness and goodness are not means, but ends! | 10 | /˘·/˘····· |
| Hath he not always treasures, always friends, | 10 | ···/·/˘/·· |
| The good great man? three treasures, LOVE, and LIGHT, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And CALM THOUGHTS, regular as infant's breath: | 10 | ···/˘˘·/˘· |
| And three firm friends, more sure than day and night, | 10 | ·········· |
| HIMSELF, his MAKER, and the ANGEL DEATH! | 10 | ˘/·/˘··/˘· |
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.