Epitaph for Mr. Hogarth
The hand of him here torpid lies,That drew th' essential form of grace;Here clos'd in death th' attentive eyes,That saw the manners in the face.
About this text
Epitaph for Mr. Hogarth is in the public domain. This text is taken from Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 (The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes, 1825), Project Gutenberg ebook #10835; 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 Johnson, Epitaph for Mr. Hogarth, in Poems (1825), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10835, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/johnson-poems/epitaph-for-mr-hogarth.html, id L27165.
Form and metre
Epitaph for Mr. Hogarth is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
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.
- 1 ABAB liesA · graceB · eyesA · faceB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The hand of him here torpid lies, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| That drew th' essential form of grace; | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| Here clos'd in death th' attentive eyes, | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
| That saw the manners in the face. | 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.