1124. The Hag
The staff is now greas'd;And very well pleas'd,She cocks out her arse at the parting,To an old ram goatThat rattles i' th' throat,Half-choked with the stink of her farting.
In a dirty hair-laceShe leads on a braceOf black boar-cats to attend her:Who scratch at the moon,And threaten at noonOf night from heaven for to rend her.
A-hunting she goes,A cracked horn she blows,At which the hounds fall a-bounding;While th' moon in her spherePeeps trembling for fear,And night's afraid of the sounding.
Words in this poem
- arse n.
- The buttocks, or hind part of an animal; the posteriors; the fundament; the bottom.
- cracked a.
- Coarsely ground or broken; as, cracked wheat.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
1124. The Hag 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, 1124. The Hag, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/1124-the-hag.html, id L06455.
Form and metre
1124. The Hag is 18 lines in 3 stanzas of 6 lines each. The rhyme scheme is AABCCB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is iambic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 76%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.3 syllables. 4 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 28% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in iambic trimeter.
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 --ABBA greas'd · pleas'd · partingA · goatB · throatB · fartingA
- 2 AABCCB laceA · braceA · herB · moonC · noonC · herB
- 3 AABCCB goesA · blowsA · boundingB · sphereC · fearC · soundingB
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 trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The staff is now greas'd; | 5 | ····· |
| And very well pleas'd, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| She cocks out her arse at the parting, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| To an old ram goat | 5 | ····· |
| That rattles i' th' throat, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| Half-choked with the stink of her farting. | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| In a dirty hair-lace | 6 | ··/˘·· |
| She leads on a brace | 5 | ····· |
| Of black boar-cats to attend her: | 8 | ·····˘/· |
| Who scratch at the moon, | 5 | ····· |
| And threaten at noon | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| Of night from heaven for to rend her. | 8 | ···/···· |
| A-hunting she goes, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| A cracked horn she blows, | 5 | ····· |
| At which the hounds fall a-bounding; | 8 | ······/˘ |
| While th' moon in her sphere | 5 | ····· |
| Peeps trembling for fear, | 5 | ·/˘·· |
| And night's afraid of the sounding. | 8 | ··˘/··/˘ |
Notes from the edition 1
Word-glosses from Pollard's edition (Muses' Library, 1891; Project Gutenberg #22421).
- Stanza 3 Lace: leash · Boar-cat: tom-cat
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.