155. Love Perfumes All Parts
If I kiss Anthea's breast,There I smell the phœnix nest:If her lip, the most sincereAltar of incense I smell there--Hands, and thighs, and legs are allRichly aromatical.Goddess Isis can't transferMusks and ambers more from her:Nor can Juno sweeter be,When she lies with Jove, than she.
Words in this poem
- isis n.
- The principal goddess worshiped by the Egyptians. She was regarded as the mother of Horus, and the sister and wife of Osiris.
- jove n.
- The chief divinity of the ancient Romans; Jupiter. [L. Jupiter, gen. Jovis, OL. Jovis, nom. & gen. for Djovis; akin to E. Tuesday. See Tuesday, and cf. Jupiter.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
155. Love Perfumes All Parts 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, 155. Love Perfumes All Parts, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/155-love-perfumes-all-parts.html, id L05208.
Form and metre
155. Love Perfumes All Parts is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.1 syllables. 30% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
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--CCDD breastA · nestA · sincereB · thereB · all · aromatical · transferC · herC · beD · sheD
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| If I kiss Anthea's breast, | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| There I smell the phœnix nest: | 7 | ······· |
| If her lip, the most sincere | 7 | ·····˘/ |
| Altar of incense I smell there-- | 8 | /˘·˘/··· |
| Hands, and thighs, and legs are all | 7 | ······· |
| Richly aromatical. | 7 | /˘····· |
| Goddess Isis can't transfer | 7 | /˘/˘·˘/ |
| Musks and ambers more from her: | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Nor can Juno sweeter be, | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| When she lies with Jove, than she. | 7 | ······· |
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.