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.

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

26 sec read
407

Quick analysis:

Scheme ABCDEFGDDHI
Closest metre Iambic hexameter
Characters 435
Words 88
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 11

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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