179. The Ass
God did forbid the Israelites to bringAn ass unto Him for an offering,Only, by this dull creature, to expressHis detestation to all slothfulness.
About this text
179. The Ass 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, 179. The Ass, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/179-the-ass.html, id L06190.
Form and metre
179. The Ass is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 bringA · offeringA · expressB · slothfulnessB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| God did forbid the Israelites to bring | 10 | ··˘/·/˘··· |
| An ass unto Him for an offering, | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Only, by this dull creature, to express | 10 | /˘···/˘·˘/ |
| His detestation to all slothfulness. | 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.