Good Master H
See yee the blindefolded pretie god, that feathered archer,Of louers miseries which maketh his bloodie game?Wote ye why his moother with a veale hath coouered his face?Trust me, least he my looue happely chaunce to beholde.
That which I eate, did I ioy, and that which I greedily gorged;As for those many goodly matters leaft I for others.
Words in this poem
- gorged a.
- Having a gorge or throat.
- goodly a.
- Pleasant; agreeable; desirable. [OE. godlich, AS. g. See Good, and Like.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Good Master H is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poetical Works of Edmund Spenser, Volume 5, Project Gutenberg ebook #10602; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edmund Spenser, Good Master H, in Amoretti and Epithalamion, and Other Poems (1595), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10602, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/spenser-amoretti/good-master-h.html, id L23793.
Form and metre
Good Master H is 6 lines in 2 stanzas. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| See yee the blindefolded pretie god, that feathered archer, | 15 | ···········/˘/˘ |
| Of louers miseries which maketh his bloodie game? | 11 | ··/˘······· |
| Wote ye why his moother with a veale hath coouered his face? | 13 | ············· |
| Trust me, least he my looue happely chaunce to beholde. | 13 | ············· |
| That which I eate, did I ioy, and that which I greedily gorged; | 14 | ···········/˘· |
| As for those many goodly matters leaft I for others. | 13 | ···//˘/˘···/˘ |
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.