The Turn
He entered well, by virtuous parts,Got up, and thrived with honest arts;He purchased friends, and fame, and honours then,And had his noble name advanced with men:But weary of that flight,He stooped in all men’s sightTo sordid flatteries, acts of strife,And sunk in that dead sea of life,So deep, as he did then death’s waters sup,But that the cork of title buoyed him up.
Words in this poem
- virtuous a.
- Possessing or exhibiting virtue. Specifically: -- (a) Exhibiting manly courage and strength; valorous; valiant; brave. [OE. vertuous, OF. vertuos, vertuous, F. vertueux, fr. L. Virtuous. See Virtue, and cf. Virtuoso.]
- sordid a.
- Filthy; foul; dirty. [L. sordidus, fr. sordere to be filthy or dirty; probably akin to E. swart: cf. F. sordide. See Swart, a.]
- strife n.
- The act of striving; earnest endeavor. [OF. estrif. See Strive.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The 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 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-turn-2.html, id L23812.
Form and metre
The Turn is 10 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 88%).
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 partsA · artsA · thenB · menB · flightC · sightC · strifeD · lifeD · supE · upE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| He entered well, by virtuous parts, | 10 | ·/˘˘··/˘˘· |
| Got up, and thrived with honest arts; | 9 | ····˘·/˘· |
| He purchased friends, and fame, and honours then, | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| And had his noble name advanced with men: | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
| But weary of that flight, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| He stooped in all men’s sight | 6 | ······ |
| To sordid flatteries, acts of strife, | 9 | ·/˘/˘˘··· |
| And sunk in that dead sea of life, | 8 | ········ |
| So deep, as he did then death’s waters sup, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| But that the cork of title buoyed him up. | 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.