1114. Upon Flood or a Thankful Man
Flood, if he has for him and his a bit,He says his fore and after grace for it:If meat he wants, then grace he says to seeHis hungry belly borne on legs jail-free.Thus have, or have not, all alike is goodTo this our poor yet ever patient Flood.
About this text
1114. Upon Flood or a Thankful Man 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, 1114. Upon Flood or a Thankful Man, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/1114-upon-flood-or-a-thankful-man.html, id L06450.
Form and metre
1114. Upon Flood or a Thankful Man 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%). 97% 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 bitA · itA · seeB · freeB · goodC · floodC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Flood, if he has for him and his a bit, | 10 | ·········· |
| He says his fore and after grace for it: | 10 | ·········· |
| If meat he wants, then grace he says to see | 10 | ·········· |
| His hungry belly borne on legs jail-free. | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| Thus have, or have not, all alike is good | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| To this our poor yet ever patient Flood. | 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.