On the Lady Arabella
How do I thanke thee, Death, and blesse thy powerThat I have past the guard, and scaped the Tower!And now my pardon is my epitaph,And a small coffin my poore carkasse hath.For at thy charge both soule and body wereEnlarged at last, secured from hope and feare;That among saints, this amongst kings is laid,And what my birth did claim, my death hath paid.
Words in this poem
- amongst prep.
- Mixed or mingled; surrounded by. [OE. amongist, amonges, amonge, among, AS. onmang, ongemang, gemang, in a crowd or mixture. For the ending -st see Amidst. See Mingle.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
On the Lady Arabella is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Richard Corbet, late bishop of Oxford and of Norwich 4th edition, Project Gutenberg ebook #65375; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Richard Corbet, On the Lady Arabella, in Poems (1647), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #65375, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/corbet-poems/on-the-lady-arabella.html, id L08886.
Form and metre
On the Lady Arabella is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 AA----BB powerA · towerA · epitaph · hath · were · feare · laidB · paidB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| How do I thanke thee, Death, and blesse thy power | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| That I have past the guard, and scaped the Tower! | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| And now my pardon is my epitaph, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And a small coffin my poore carkasse hath. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| For at thy charge both soule and body were | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Enlarged at last, secured from hope and feare; | 10 | ˘/··˘/···· |
| That among saints, this amongst kings is laid, | 10 | ·········· |
| And what my birth did claim, my death hath paid. | 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.