Analysis of Honourable Employment

John Webster 1580 (London) – 1632 (London)



O my lord, lie not idle:
The chiefest action for a man of great spirit
Is never to be out of action. We should think
The soul was never put into the body,
Which has so many rare and curious pieces
Of mathematical motion, to stand still.
Virtue is ever sowing of her seeds;
In the trenches for the soldier: in the wakeful study
For the scholar; in the furrows of the sea
For men of our profession; of all which
Arise and spring up honour.


Scheme ABCDEFGDDHI
Poetic Form
Metre 1111110 01101011110 110111110111 01110101010 111101010010 1010010111 1011010101 0010101000110 1010001101 11110010111 010111
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 435
Words 88
Sentences 4
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 11
Lines Amount 11
Letters per line (avg) 31
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 341
Words per stanza (avg) 86
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

26 sec read
407

John Webster

John Webster was an English Jacobean dramatist best known for his tragedies The White Devil and The Duchess of Malfi, which are often regarded as masterpieces of the early 17th-century English stage. His life and career overlapped William Shakespeare's. more…

All John Webster poems | John Webster Books

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    The repetition of similar sounds at the ends of words or within words is known as _______.
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