157. On Himself
Love-sick I am, and must endureA desperate grief, that finds no cure.Ah me! I try; and trying, proveNo herbs have power to cure love.Only one sovereign salve I know,And that is death, the end of woe.
Words in this poem
- desperate a.
- Without hope; given to despair; hopeless. [L. desperatus, p. p. of desperare. See Despair, and cf. Desperado.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
157. On Himself 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, 157. On Himself, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/157-on-himself.html, id L05210.
Form and metre
157. On Himself is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic 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 AABBCC endureA · cureA · proveB · loveB · knowC · woeC
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Love-sick I am, and must endure | 8 | ······˘/ |
| A desperate grief, that finds no cure. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Ah me! I try; and trying, prove | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| No herbs have power to cure love. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Only one sovereign salve I know, | 8 | /˘·/˘··· |
| And that is death, the end of woe. | 8 | ········ |
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.