292. Upon Shark. Epig
Shark, when he goes to any public feast,Eats to one's thinking, of all there, the least.What saves the master of the house therebyWhen if the servants search, they may descryIn his wide codpiece, dinner being done,Two napkins cramm'd up, and a silver spoon?
Words in this poem
- descry
- , Discovery or view, as of an army seen at a distance.
- codpiece n.
- A part of male dress in front of the breeches, formerly made very conspicuous. Shak. Fosbroke. [Cod, n., piece.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
292. Upon Shark. Epig 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, 292. Upon Shark. Epig, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/292-upon-shark-epig.html, id L06321.
Form and metre
292. Upon Shark. Epig is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
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 AABB-- feastA · leastA · therebyB · descryB · done · spoon
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Shark, when he goes to any public feast, | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Eats to one's thinking, of all there, the least. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| What saves the master of the house thereby | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| When if the servants search, they may descry | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| In his wide codpiece, dinner being done, | 10 | ···/˘/˘/˘· |
| Two napkins cramm'd up, and a silver spoon? | 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.