Improviso Translation of Lines of Benserade on His Bed
In bed we laugh, in bed we cry,And, born in bed, in bed we die;The near approach a bed may showOf human bliss to human woe.
About this text
Improviso Translation of Lines of Benserade on His Bed 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, Improviso Translation of Lines of Benserade on His Bed, in Poems (1825), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10835, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/johnson-poems/improviso-translation-of-lines-of-benserade-on-his-bed.html, id L27164.
Form and metre
Improviso Translation of Lines of Benserade on His Bed is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
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 AABB cryA · dieA · showB · woeB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| In bed we laugh, in bed we cry, | 8 | ········ |
| And, born in bed, in bed we die; | 8 | ········ |
| The near approach a bed may show | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| Of human bliss to human woe. | 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.