Age
Death, tho' I see him not, is nearAnd grudges me my eightieth year.Now, I would give him all these lastFor one that fifty have run past.Ah! he strikes all things, all alike,But bargains: those he will not strike.
Words in this poem
- eightieth a.
- The next in order after seventy-ninth. [From Eighty.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Age is in the public domain. This text is taken from Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection, Project Gutenberg ebook #21628; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Walter Savage Landor, Age, in Imaginary Conversations and Poems (1795–1863), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #21628, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/landor-poems/age.html, id L12204.
Form and metre
Age is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 nearA · yearA · lastB · pastB · alikeC · strikeC
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Death, tho' I see him not, is near | 8 | ········ |
| And grudges me my eightieth year. | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Now, I would give him all these last | 8 | ········ |
| For one that fifty have run past. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Ah! he strikes all things, all alike, | 8 | ······˘/ |
| But bargains: those he will not strike. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
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.