236. Upon a Physician
Thou cam'st to cure me, doctor, of my cold,And caught'st thyself the more by twenty fold:Prithee go home; and for thy credit beFirst cured thyself, then come and cure me.
Words in this poem
- prithee interj.
- A corruption of pray thee; as, I prithee; generally used without I.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
236. Upon a Physician 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, 236. Upon a Physician, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/236-upon-a-physician.html, id L05276.
Form and metre
236. Upon a Physician is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
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 coldA · foldA · beB · meB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Thou cam'st to cure me, doctor, of my cold, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And caught'st thyself the more by twenty fold: | 10 | ··˘/···/˘· |
| Prithee go home; and for thy credit be | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| First cured thyself, then come and cure me. | 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.