Analysis of An Epilogue.
John Dryden 1631 (Aldwincle) – 1631 (London)
You saw our wife was chaste, yet thoroughly tried,
And, without doubt, ye are hugely edified;
For, like our hero, whom we show'd to-day,
You think no woman true, but in a play.
Love once did make a pretty kind of show:
Esteem and kindness in one breast would grow:
But 'twas Heaven knows how many years ago.
Now some small chat, and guinea expectation,
Gets all the pretty creatures in the nation:
In comedy your little selves you meet;
'Tis Covent Garden drawn in Bridges Street.
Smile on our author then, if he has shown
A jolly nut-brown bastard of your own.
Ah! happy you, with ease and with delight,
Who act those follies, Poets toil to write!
The sweating Muse does almost leave the chase;
She puffs, and hardly keeps your Protean vices pace.
Pinch you but in one vice, away you fly
To some new frisk of contrariety.
You roll like snow-balls, gathering as you run,
And get seven devils, when dispossess'd of one.
Your Venus once was a Platonic queen;
Nothing of love beside the face was seen;
But every inch of her you now uncase,
And clap a vizard-mask upon the face.
For sins like these, the zealous of the land,
With little hair, and little or no band,
Declare how circulating pestilences
Watch, every twenty years, to snap offences.
Saturn, even now, takes doctoral degrees;
He'll do your work this summer without fees.
Let all the boxes, Phoebus, find thy grace,
And, ah! preserve the eighteen-penny place!
But for the pit confounders, let 'em go,
And find as little mercy as they show:
The Actors thus, and thus thy Poets pray;
For every critic saved, thou damn'st a play.
Scheme | AABBCCCDDEEFFGGHHIADDJJHHKKHHLLHHCCBB |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 111011111001 001111101 11101011111 1111011001 1111010111 0101001111 11101110101 1111010010 11010100010 0100110111 1101010101 11101011111 0101110111 1101110101 1111010111 010111101 1101011010101 1110110111 111111 11111100111 01101010111 1101100101 1011010111 1100110111 010110101 1111010101 1101010111 0111001 1100101111 10101110001 1111110011 1101010111 0101001101 11011111 0111010111 0101011101 110010111101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,550 |
Words | 285 |
Sentences | 16 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 37 |
Lines Amount | 37 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 1,226 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 285 |
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Submitted on August 03, 2020
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:26 min read
- 5 Views
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"An Epilogue." Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 12 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/55890/an-epilogue.>.
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