To Carthy, on His Sending About Specimens to Force People to Subscribe to His Longinus
On his sending about specimens to force people to subscribe to hisLonginus.
Thus vagrant beggars, to extortBy charity a mean support,Their sores and putrid ulcers show,And shock our sense till we bestow.
Words in this poem
- subscribe v. t.
- To write underneath, as one's name; to sign (one's name) to a document. [L. subscribere, subscriptum; sub under + scribere to write: cf. F. souscrire. See Scribe.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To Carthy, on His Sending About Specimens to Force People to Subscribe to His Longinus 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, To Carthy, on His Sending About Specimens to Force People to Subscribe to His Longinus, in Cadenus and Vanessa, and Other Poems (1710–1745), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13621, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/swift-poems/to-carthy-on-his-sending-about-specimens-to-force-people-to-subscribe-to-his-longinus.html, id L26340.
Form and metre
To Carthy, on His Sending About Specimens to Force People to Subscribe to His Longinus is 6 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 73%).
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.
- 2 AABB extortA · supportA · showB · bestowB
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 his sending about specimens to force people to subscribe to his | 17 | ··/˘··/˘··/˘·˘/·· |
| Longinus. | 3 | ··· |
| Thus vagrant beggars, to extort | 8 | ·/˘/˘·˘/ |
| By charity a mean support, | 8 | ·/˘˘··˘/ |
| Their sores and putrid ulcers show, | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| And shock our sense till we bestow. | 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.