On Seeing a Bust of Mrs. Montague
Had this fair figure, which this frame displays,Adorn'd in Roman time the brightest days,In every dome, in every sacred place,Her statue would have breath'd an added grace,And on its basis would have been enroll'd,"This is Minerva, cast in virtue's mould."
Words in this poem
- minerva n.
- The goddess of wisdom, of war, of the arts and sciences, of poetry, and of spinning and weaving; -- identified with the Grecian Pallas Athene. [L.]
- mould n.
- Crumbling, soft, friable earth; esp., earth containing the remains or constituents of organic matter, and suited to the growth of plants; soil. [OE. molde, AS. molde; akin to D. mul, G. mull, mulm, OHG. molt, molta, Icel. mold, Dan. muld, Sw. mull, Goth. mulda, and E. meal flour. See Meal, and cf. Mole a]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
On Seeing a Bust of Mrs. Montague 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, On Seeing a Bust of Mrs. Montague, in Poems (1825), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10835, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/johnson-poems/on-seeing-a-bust-of-mrs-montague.html, id L27173.
Form and metre
On Seeing a Bust of Mrs. Montague is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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 AABBCC displaysA · daysA · placeB · graceB · enroll'dC · mouldC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Had this fair figure, which this frame displays, | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| Adorn'd in Roman time the brightest days, | 10 | ˘/·/˘··/˘· |
| In every dome, in every sacred place, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| Her statue would have breath'd an added grace, | 10 | ·/·····/˘· |
| And on its basis would have been enroll'd, | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| "This is Minerva, cast in virtue's mould." | 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.