Of Life and Death
THE ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds:Through which our merit leads us to our meeds.How wilful blind is he, then, that would stray,And hath it in his powers to make his way!This world death’s region is, the other life’s:And here it should be one of our first strifes,So to front death, as men might judge us past it:For good men but see death, the wicked taste it.
About this text
Of Life and Death is in the public domain. This text is taken from Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter and Some Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #5134; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ben Jonson, Of Life and Death, in Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter and Some Poems (1616), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #5134, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/jonson-poems/of-life-and-death.html, id L23801.
Form and metre
Of Life and Death is 8 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 84%).
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 AABBCCDD deedsA · meedsA · strayB · wayB · life'sC · strifesC · itD · itD
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 ports of death are sins; of life, good deeds: | 10 | ·········· |
| Through which our merit leads us to our meeds. | 10 | ··//˘···/· |
| How wilful blind is he, then, that would stray, | 10 | ·········· |
| And hath it in his powers to make his way! | 10 | ·····/···· |
| This world death’s region is, the other life’s: | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| And here it should be one of our first strifes, | 10 | ·······/·· |
| So to front death, as men might judge us past it: | 11 | ··········· |
| For good men but see death, the wicked taste it. | 11 | ·······/˘·· |
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.