Imitated
So blush'd Aurora with celestial charms,So bloom'd the goddess in a mortal's arms;He sunk at length to wasting age a prey,But thy book perish'd on its natal day.
Words in this poem
- aurora n.
- The rising light of the morning; the dawn of day; the redness of the sky just before the sun rises. [L. aurora, for ausosa, akin to Gr. ushas, and E. east.]
- natal a.
- Of or pertaining to one's birth; accompying or dating from one's birth; native. [L. natalis, fr. natus, p.p. of nasci to be born: cf. F. natal. See Nation, and cf. Noel.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Imitated is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #13621; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Jonathan Swift, Imitated, in Poems, Volume II (1710–1745), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13621, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/swift-poems/imitated.html, id L09363.
Form and metre
Imitated is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 AABB charmsA · armsA · preyB · dayB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| So blush'd Aurora with celestial charms, | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| So bloom'd the goddess in a mortal's arms; | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| He sunk at length to wasting age a prey, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| But thy book perish'd on its natal day. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
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.