A Song: All my past Life is mine no more
All my past Life is mine no more,The flying Hours are gone:Like transitory Dreams giv'n o'er,Whose Images are kept in store,By Memory alone.
The Time that is to come is not;How can it then be mine?The present Moment's all my Lot;And that, as fast as it is got,Phillis, is only thine.
Then talk not of Inconstancy,False Hearts, and broken Vows;If I, by Miracle, can beThis live long Minute true to thee,'Tis all that Heav'n allows.
About this text
A Song: All my past Life is mine no more is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Works of the Right Honourable John, Earl of Rochester Consisting of Satires, Songs, Translations, and other Occasional Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #44891; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: John Wilmot Rochester, A Song: All my past Life is mine no more, in The Works of the Earl of Rochester (1680), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #44891, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rochester-works/a-song-all-my-past-life-is-mine-no-more.html, id L20445.
Form and metre
A Song: All my past Life is mine no more is 15 lines in 3 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
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 A--A- moreA · gone · o'er · storeA · alone
- 2 ABAAB notA · mineB · lotA · gotA · thineB
- 3 -ABBA inconstancy · vowsA · beB · theeB · allowsA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| All my past Life is mine no more, | 8 | ········ |
| The flying Hours are gone: | 7 | ·/˘/˘·· |
| Like transitory Dreams giv'n o'er, | 8 | ·/˘·˘··· |
| Whose Images are kept in store, | 8 | ·/˘˘···· |
| By Memory alone. | 6 | ·/˘˘˘/ |
| The Time that is to come is not; | 8 | ········ |
| How can it then be mine? | 6 | ······ |
| The present Moment's all my Lot; | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| And that, as fast as it is got, | 8 | ········ |
| Phillis, is only thine. | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| Then talk not of Inconstancy, | 8 | ····˘/˘˘ |
| False Hearts, and broken Vows; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| If I, by Miracle, can be | 8 | ···/˘˘·· |
| This live long Minute true to thee, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| 'Tis all that Heav'n allows. | 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.