Money
Whereunto is money good?Who has it not wants hardihood,Who has it has much trouble and care,Who once has had it has despair.
Words in this poem
- hardihood n.
- Boldness, united with firmness and constancy of mind; bravery; intrepidity; also, audaciousness; impudence. [Hardy + -hood.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Money is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Project Gutenberg ebook #1365; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Money, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/money.html, id L18060.
Form and metre
Money is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 AABB goodA · hardihoodA · careB · despairB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Whereunto is money good? | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Who has it not wants hardihood, | 8 | ·····/˘˘ |
| Who has it has much trouble and care, | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
| Who once has had it has despair. | 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.