A Drinking-Song
Bacchus must now his power resign--I am the only God of Wine!It is not fit the wretch should beIn competition set with me,Who can drink ten times more than he.
Make a new world, ye powers divine!Stock’d with nothing else but Wine:Let Wine its only product be,Let Wine be earth, and air, and sea--And let that Wine be all for me!
About this text
A Drinking-Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Oxford Book of English Verse, 1250-1900, Project Gutenberg ebook #66619; 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 Carey, A Drinking-Song, in Poems (1693–1743), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #66619, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/obev-henry-carey/a-drinking-song.html, id L16153.
Form and metre
A Drinking-Song is 10 lines in 2 stanzas of 5 lines each. Every stanza rhymes AABBB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.9 syllables. 10% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See 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 AABBB resignA · wineA · beB · meB · heB
- 2 AABBB divineA · wineA · beB · seaB · meB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Bacchus must now his power resign-- | 8 | /˘···/˘/ |
| I am the only God of Wine! | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| It is not fit the wretch should be | 8 | ········ |
| In competition set with me, | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| Who can drink ten times more than he. | 8 | ········ |
| Make a new world, ye powers divine! | 8 | ·····/˘/ |
| Stock’d with nothing else but Wine: | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Let Wine its only product be, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Let Wine be earth, and air, and sea-- | 8 | ········ |
| And let that Wine be all for me! | 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.