To Mr Granville (Now Lord Lansdowne), on His Verses to King James II
An early plant! which such a blossom bears,And shows a genius so beyond his years;A judgment! that could make so fair a choice;So high a subject to employ his voice;Still as it grows, how sweetly will he singThe growing greatness of our matchless king!
About this text
To Mr Granville (Now Lord Lansdowne), on His Verses to King James II is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham, Project Gutenberg ebook #12322; 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 Waller, To Mr Granville (Now Lord Lansdowne), on His Verses to King James II, in Poetical Works (1645–1668), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12322, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/waller-denham/to-mr-granville-now-lord-lansdowne-on-his-verses-to-king-jam.html, id L09123.
Form and metre
To Mr Granville (Now Lord Lansdowne), on His Verses to King James II is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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.
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 bears · years · choiceA · voiceA · singB · kingB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| An early plant! which such a blossom bears, | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| And shows a genius so beyond his years; | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| A judgment! that could make so fair a choice; | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| So high a subject to employ his voice; | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
| Still as it grows, how sweetly will he sing | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| The growing greatness of our matchless king! | 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.