Lines Written Extempore on Mr. Harley's Being Stabbed, and Addressed to His Physician, 1710-11
On Britain Europe's safety lies,Britain is lost if Harley dies:Harley depends upon your skill:Think what you save, or what you kill.
About this text
Lines Written Extempore on Mr. Harley's Being Stabbed, and Addressed to His Physician, 1710-11 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, Lines Written Extempore on Mr. Harley's Being Stabbed, and Addressed to His Physician, 1710-11, in Cadenus and Vanessa, and Other Poems (1710–1745), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13621, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/swift-poems/lines-written-extempore-on-mr-harley-s-being-stabbed-and-addressed-to-his-physician-1710-11.html, id L25680.
Form and metre
Lines Written Extempore on Mr. Harley's Being Stabbed, and Addressed to His Physician, 1710-11 is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AABB liesA · diesA · skillB · killB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| On Britain Europe's safety lies, | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘· |
| Britain is lost if Harley dies: | 8 | /˘···/˘· |
| Harley depends upon your skill: | 8 | /˘˘/···· |
| Think what you save, or what you kill. | 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.