1054. To Anthea
Sick is Anthea, sickly is the spring,The primrose sick, and sickly everything;The while my dear Anthea does but droop,The tulips, lilies, daffodils do stoop:But when again she's got her healthful hour,Each bending then will rise a proper flower.
About this text
1054. To Anthea is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #22421; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Robert Herrick, 1054. To Anthea, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/1054-to-anthea.html, id L05954.
Form and metre
1054. To Anthea is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.3 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 springA · everythingA · droopB · stoopB · hourC · flowerC
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sick is Anthea, sickly is the spring, | 10 | ··/˘˘/˘··· |
| The primrose sick, and sickly everything; | 10 | ·/···/˘/˘· |
| The while my dear Anthea does but droop, | 10 | ····/˘˘··· |
| The tulips, lilies, daffodils do stoop: | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘··· |
| But when again she's got her healthful hour, | 11 | ··˘/···/˘/˘ |
| Each bending then will rise a proper flower. | 11 | ·/˘····/˘/˘ |
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.