Englished
The hand, by which no king but serjeant dies,Mutius in fire doth freely sacrifice;The prince admires the Hero, quits his pains,And Victor from the seige peace entertains;Rome's more oblig'd to flames than arms or pow'r,When one burnt hand shall the whole war devour.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
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.html, id L13073.
Form and metre
Englished is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See 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 --AA-- dies · sacrifice · painsA · entertainsA · pow'r · devour
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The hand, by which no king but serjeant dies, | 10 | ·········· |
| Mutius in fire doth freely sacrifice; | 10 | ···/·/˘/˘· |
| The prince admires the Hero, quits his pains, | 10 | ··˘/·/˘··· |
| And Victor from the seige peace entertains; | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| Rome's more oblig'd to flames than arms or pow'r, | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| When one burnt hand shall the whole war devour. | 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.