Englished
By thy fault is my mind brought to that pass,That it its office quite forgotten has:For be'est thou best, I cannot wish thee well,And be'est thou worst, then I must love thee still.
About this text
Englished is in the public domain. This text is taken from Lucasta, Project Gutenberg ebook #703; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Richard Lovelace, Englished, in Lucasta (1649), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #703, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lovelace-lucasta/englished-6.html, id L13106.
Form and metre
Englished is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
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.
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| By thy fault is my mind brought to that pass, | 10 | ·········· |
| That it its office quite forgotten has: | 10 | ···/˘·˘/˘· |
| For be'est thou best, I cannot wish thee well, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And be'est thou worst, then I must love thee still. | 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.