Moral
If ev'ry man has got his price,As generally is agreed,You will, by taking my advice,Let yours be very large indeed.Corruption is not nice at all,Unless the bribe be far from small.
Words in this poem
- bribe n.
- A gift begged; a present. [F. bribe a lump of bread, scraps, leavings of meals (that are generally given to a beggar), LL. briba scrap of bread; cf. OF. briber, brifer, to eat gluttonousl]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Moral is in the public domain. This text is taken from Verse and Worse, Project Gutenberg ebook #36702; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Harry Graham, Moral, in Verse and Worse (1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #36702, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/graham-verse-and-worse/moral-4.html, id L23306.
Form and metre
Moral is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABABCC. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 ABABCC priceA · agreedB · adviceA · indeedB · allC · smallC
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| If ev'ry man has got his price, | 8 | ········ |
| As generally is agreed, | 8 | ·/˘˘˘·˘/ |
| You will, by taking my advice, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| Let yours be very large indeed. | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| Corruption is not nice at all, | 8 | ˘/˘····· |
| Unless the bribe be far from small. | 8 | ········ |
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.