260. How Violets Came Blue
Love on a day, wise poets tell,Some time in wrangling spent,Whether the violets should excel,Or she, in sweetest scent.
But Venus having lost the day,Poor girls, she fell on you:And beat ye so, as some dare say,Her blows did make ye blue.
About this text
260. How Violets Came Blue 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, 260. How Violets Came Blue, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/260-how-violets-came-blue.html, id L05295.
Form and metre
260. How Violets Came Blue is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%). 91% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.2 syllables.
See other poems in common measure.
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 ABAB tellA · spentB · excelA · scentB
- 2 ABAB dayA · youB · sayA · blueB
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Love on a day, wise poets tell, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Some time in wrangling spent, | 7 | ···/˘˘· |
| Whether the violets should excel, | 9 | ···/˘˘·˘/ |
| Or she, in sweetest scent. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| But Venus having lost the day, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Poor girls, she fell on you: | 6 | ······ |
| And beat ye so, as some dare say, | 8 | ········ |
| Her blows did make ye blue. | 6 | ······ |
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.