Lineally Translated Out of the French
If James, the king of wit,To see me thought not fit,Sure this the cause hath been,That, ravish'd with my merit,He thought I was all spirit,And so not to be seen.
About this text
Lineally Translated Out of the French 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, Lineally Translated Out of the French, in Lucasta (1649), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #703, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/lovelace-lucasta/lineally-translated-out-of-the-french.html, id L13089.
Form and metre
Lineally Translated Out of the French is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.3 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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-AA- witA · fitA · been · meritA · spiritA · seen
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| If James, the king of wit, | 6 | ······ |
| To see me thought not fit, | 6 | ······ |
| Sure this the cause hath been, | 6 | ······ |
| That, ravish'd with my merit, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| He thought I was all spirit, | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| And so not to be seen. | 6 | ······ |
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.