The Counter-Turn
Call, noble Lucius, then for wine,And let thy looks with gladness shine:Accept this garland, plant it on thy headAnd think, nay know, thy Morison’s not deadHe leaped the present age,Possessed with holy rageTo see that bright eternal day;Of which we priests and poets say,Such truths, as we expect for happy men:And there he lives with memory and Ben.
Words in this poem
- expect v. t.
- To wait for; to await. [L. expectatum, to look out for, await, expect; ex + out spectare to look at. See Spectacle.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Counter-Turn 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, The Counter-Turn, in Discoveries Made Upon Men and Matter and Some Poems (1616), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #5134, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/jonson-poems/the-counter-turn-3.html, id L23816.
Form and metre
The Counter-Turn is 10 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 AABBCCDDEE wineA · shineA · headB · deadB · ageC · rageC · dayD · sayD · menE · benE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Call, noble Lucius, then for wine, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And let thy looks with gladness shine: | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Accept this garland, plant it on thy head | 10 | ˘/·/˘····· |
| And think, nay know, thy Morison’s not dead | 10 | ·····/˘˘·· |
| He leaped the present age, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Possessed with holy rage | 6 | ˘/·/˘· |
| To see that bright eternal day; | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
| Of which we priests and poets say, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Such truths, as we expect for happy men: | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| And there he lives with memory and Ben. | 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.