An, Epistle, To, Dr. Moore
Whether dispensing hope, and easeTo the pale victim of disease,Or in the social crowd you sit,And charm the group with sense and wit,Moore's partial ear will not disdainAttention to my artless strain.
About this text
An, Epistle, To, Dr. Moore is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems (1786), Volume I., Project Gutenberg ebook #11054; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Helen Maria Williams, An, Epistle, To, Dr. Moore, in Poems (1786) (1786), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #11054, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/williams-helen-poems/an-epistle-to-dr-moore.html, id L10029.
Form and metre
An, Epistle, To, Dr. Moore is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables.
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 AABBCC easeA · diseaseA · sitB · witB · disdainC · strainC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Whether dispensing hope, and ease | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| To the pale victim of disease, | 8 | ···/˘·˘/ |
| Or in the social crowd you sit, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And charm the group with sense and wit, | 8 | ········ |
| Moore's partial ear will not disdain | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Attention to my artless strain. | 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.