A Song: Give me leave to rail at you
Give me leave to rail at you,I ask nothing but my due;To call you false, and then to sayYou shall not keep my Heart a Day:But, alas! against my Will,I must be your Captive still.Ah! be kinder then; for ICannot change, and would not die.
Kindness has resistless Charms,All besides but weakly move;Fiercest Anger it disarms,And clips the Wings of flying Love.Beauty does the Heart invade,Kindness only can persuade;It gilds the Lover's servile Chain,And makes the Slaves grow pleas'd again.
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,]
- resistless a.
- Having no power to resist; making no opposition.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Song: Give me leave to rail at you 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: Give me leave to rail at you, in The Works of the Earl of Rochester (1680), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #44891, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/rochester-works/a-song-give-me-leave-to-rail-at-you.html, id L20452.
Form and metre
A Song: Give me leave to rail at you is 16 lines in 2 stanzas of 8 lines each. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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 AABBCCDD youA · dueA · sayB · dayB · willC · stillC · iD · dieD
- 2 ABABCCDD charmsA · moveB · disarmsA · loveB · invadeC · persuadeC · chainD · againD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Give me leave to rail at you, | 7 | ······· |
| I ask nothing but my due; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| To call you false, and then to say | 8 | ········ |
| You shall not keep my Heart a Day: | 8 | ········ |
| But, alas! against my Will, | 7 | ·˘/···· |
| I must be your Captive still. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Ah! be kinder then; for I | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Cannot change, and would not die. | 7 | /˘····· |
| Kindness has resistless Charms, | 7 | /˘·˘/˘· |
| All besides but weakly move; | 7 | ·˘/·/˘· |
| Fiercest Anger it disarms, | 7 | /˘/˘·˘/ |
| And clips the Wings of flying Love. | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Beauty does the Heart invade, | 7 | /˘···˘/ |
| Kindness only can persuade; | 7 | /˘/˘·˘/ |
| It gilds the Lover's servile Chain, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| And makes the Slaves grow pleas'd again. | 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.