237. Upon Sudds, a Laundress
Sudds launders bands in piss, and starches themBoth with her husband's and her own tough fleam.
Words in this poem
- piss v. t.
- To discharge urine, to urinate. [OE. pissen, F. pisser; akin to It. pisciare, D. & G. pissen, Dan. pisse, Icel. pissa.]
- fleam n.
- A sharp instrument used for opening veins, lancing gums, etc.; a kind of lancet. Fleam tooth, a tooth of a saw shaped like an isosceles triangle; a peg tooth. Knight. [F. flamme, OF. flieme, fr. LL. flevotomum, phlebotomum; cf. D. vlijm. See Phlebotomy.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
237. Upon Sudds, a Laundress 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, 237. Upon Sudds, a Laundress, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/237-upon-sudds-a-laundress.html, id L06314.
Form and metre
237. Upon Sudds, a Laundress is 2 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Sudds launders bands in piss, and starches them | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Both with her husband's and her own tough fleam. | 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.