1101. Upon Spur
Spur jingles now, and swears by no mean oaths,He's double honour'd, since he's got gay clothes:Most like his suit, and all commend the trim;And thus they praise the sumpter, but not him:As to the goddess, people did conferWorship, and not to th' ass that carried her.
Words in this poem
- sumpter n.
- The driver of a pack horse. Skeat. [OF. sommetier the driver of a pack horse; akin to OF. & F. sommier a pack horse, L. sagmarius, fr. sagma a pack saddle, in LL., a load, Gr. saj, sañj, to hang o]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
1101. Upon Spur 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, 1101. Upon Spur, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/1101-upon-spur.html, id L06445.
Form and metre
1101. Upon Spur 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 86%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
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 oathsA · clothesA · trimB · himB · conferC · herC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Spur jingles now, and swears by no mean oaths, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| He's double honour'd, since he's got gay clothes: | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Most like his suit, and all commend the trim; | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| And thus they praise the sumpter, but not him: | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| As to the goddess, people did confer | 10 | ···/˘/˘·˘/ |
| Worship, and not to th' ass that carried her. | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
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.