201. Temporal Goods
These temporal goods God, the most wise, commendsTo th' good and bad in common for two ends:First, that these goods none here may o'er-esteemBecause the wicked do partake of them;Next, that these ills none cowardly may shun,Being, oft here, the just man's portion.
About this text
201. Temporal Goods 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, 201. Temporal Goods, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/201-temporal-goods.html, id L06212.
Form and metre
201. Temporal Goods is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%). 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 AA--BB commendsA · endsA · esteem · them · shunB · portionB
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| These temporal goods God, the most wise, commends | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| To th' good and bad in common for two ends: | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| First, that these goods none here may o'er-esteem | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Because the wicked do partake of them; | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
| Next, that these ills none cowardly may shun, | 10 | ·····/˘˘·· |
| Being, oft here, the just man's portion. | 9 | /˘·····/˘ |
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.