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John Donne: Poem analysis » Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward » Structure and versification in Good Friday, 1613

Good Friday, 1613 is written in non-stanzaic form, as are the Elegies and Satires. The form is iambic pentameter rhyming couplets.

Enjambements

In fact, Donne finds his argument spills over frequently into enjambement, again fairly unusual for him. Thus ll.15-16; 23-24; 37-38. The final couplet reminds us of the final couplet in his Holy Sonnets: resolved and yet not quite done. The verse is low-key.

Investigating Good Friday, 1613

  • What do you find striking about Good Friday, 1613?

    • Even though you may not be the least religious, have you been able to enter into the religious imagination of the poet?

  • Look again at the section on symbolism in the poem

    • Is there further symbolism in Donne’s allusion to west and east that we have not touched on?

The technical name for a verse, or a regular repeating unit of so many lines in a poem. Poetry can be stanzaic or non-stanzaic.
A term used of speech rhythms in blank verse; an iambic rhythm is an unstressed, or weak, beat followed by a stressed, or strong, beat. It is a rising metre.
A line containing five stressed syllables or feet.
Pairs of lines which rhyme with each other.
The technique used in blank verse and other verse forms in which the sense of a line runs on without a pause to the next one; this often gives a sense of greater fluency to the lines.