151. Upon a Young Mother of Many Children
Let all chaste matrons, when they chance to seeMy num'rous issue, praise and pity me:Praise me for having such a fruitful womb,Pity me, too, who found so soon a tomb.
Words in this poem
- womb n.
- The belly; the abdomen. [OE. wombe, wambe, AS. wamb, womb; akin to D. wam belly, OS. & OHG. wamba, G. wamme, wampe, Icel. vömb, Sw. v&mb, Dan. vom, Goth. wamba.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
151. Upon a Young Mother of Many Children 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, 151. Upon a Young Mother of Many Children, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/151-upon-a-young-mother-of-many-children.html, id L05204.
Form and metre
151. Upon a Young Mother of Many Children is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 AABB seeA · meA · wombB · tombB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Let all chaste matrons, when they chance to see | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| My num'rous issue, praise and pity me: | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Praise me for having such a fruitful womb, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Pity me, too, who found so soon a tomb. | 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.