209. Safety to Look to Oneself
For my neighbour I'll not know,Whether high he builds or no:Only this I'll look upon,Firm be my foundation.Sound or unsound, let it be!'Tis the lot ordain'd for me.He who to the ground does fallHas not whence to sink at all.
Words in this poem
- neighbour v. i.
- To dwell in the vicinity; to be a neighbor, or in the neighborhood; to be near.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
209. Safety to Look to Oneself 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, 209. Safety to Look to Oneself, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/209-safety-to-look-to-oneself.html, id L05253.
Form and metre
209. Safety to Look to Oneself is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.9 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% 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 AABBCCDD knowA · noA · uponB · foundationB · beC · meC · fallD · allD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| For my neighbour I'll not know, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Whether high he builds or no: | 7 | ······· |
| Only this I'll look upon, | 7 | /˘····· |
| Firm be my foundation. | 6 | ···˘/˘ |
| Sound or unsound, let it be! | 7 | ··˘/··· |
| 'Tis the lot ordain'd for me. | 7 | ···˘/·· |
| He who to the ground does fall | 7 | ······· |
| Has not whence to sink at all. | 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.