The Stand
Go now, and tell out days summed up with fears,And make them years;Produce thy mass of miseries on the stage,To swell thine age;Repeat of things a throng,To show thou hast been long,Not lived: for life doth her great actions spell.By what was done and wroughtIn season, and so broughtTo light: her measures are, how wellEach syllabe answered, and was formed, how fair;These make the lines of life, and that’s her air!
Words in this poem
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- syllabe n.
- Syllable. B. Jonson. [F.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Stand 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 Stand, 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-stand-2.html, id L23814.
Form and metre
The Stand is 12 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: 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 AABBCCDEEDFF fearsA · yearsA · stageB · ageB · throngC · longC · spellD · wroughtE · broughtE · wellD · fairF · airF
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Go now, and tell out days summed up with fears, | 10 | ·········· |
| And make them years; | 4 | ···· |
| Produce thy mass of miseries on the stage, | 10 | ˘/···/˘··· |
| To swell thine age; | 4 | ···· |
| Repeat of things a throng, | 6 | ˘/···· |
| To show thou hast been long, | 6 | ······ |
| Not lived: for life doth her great actions spell. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| By what was done and wrought | 6 | ······ |
| In season, and so brought | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| To light: her measures are, how well | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Each syllabe answered, and was formed, how fair; | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| These make the lines of life, and that’s her air! | 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.