215. The Bubble. A Song
To my revenge and to her desperate fearsFly, thou made bubble of my sighs and tears.In the wild air when thou hast rolled about,And, like a blasting planet, found her out.Stoop, mount, pass by to take her eye, then glareLike to a dreadful comet in the air:Next, when thou dost perceive her fixed sightFor thy revenge to be most opposite,Then, like a globe or ball of wild-fire, fly,And break thyself in shivers on her eye.
Words in this poem
- desperate a.
- Without hope; given to despair; hopeless. [L. desperatus, p. p. of desperare. See Despair, and cf. Desperado.]
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- glare v. i.
- To shine with a bright, dazzling light. [OE. glaren, gloren; cf. AS. glær amber, LG. glaren to glow or burn like coals, D. gloren to glimmer; prob. akin to E. glass.]
- dreadful a.
- Full of dread or terror; fearful.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
215. The Bubble. A Song 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, 215. The Bubble. A Song, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/215-the-bubble-a-song.html, id L05259.
Form and metre
215. The Bubble. A Song is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 98% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 30% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 AABBCC-BDD fearsA · tearsA · aboutB · outB · glareC · airC · sight · oppositeB · flyD · eyeD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| To my revenge and to her desperate fears | 10 | ··˘/···/˘· |
| Fly, thou made bubble of my sighs and tears. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| In the wild air when thou hast rolled about, | 10 | ·········· |
| And, like a blasting planet, found her out. | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Stoop, mount, pass by to take her eye, then glare | 10 | ·········· |
| Like to a dreadful comet in the air: | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Next, when thou dost perceive her fixed sight | 10 | ····˘/··˘· |
| For thy revenge to be most opposite, | 10 | ··˘/···/˘˘ |
| Then, like a globe or ball of wild-fire, fly, | 10 | ········/· |
| And break thyself in shivers on her eye. | 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.