314. The Good-Night or Blessing
Blessings in abundance comeTo the bride and to her groom;May the bed and this short nightKnow the fulness of delight!Pleasures many here attend ye,And, ere long, a boy Love send yeCurled and comely, and so trim,Maids, in time, may ravish him.Thus a dew of graces fallOn ye both; good-night to all.
About this text
314. The Good-Night or Blessing 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, 314. The Good-Night or Blessing, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/314-the-good-night-or-blessing.html, id L05339.
Form and metre
314. The Good-Night or Blessing is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.2 syllables. 40% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
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 --AABBCCDD come · groom · nightA · delightA · yeB · yeB · trimC · himC · fallD · allD
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Blessings in abundance come | 7 | /˘·˘/˘· |
| To the bride and to her groom; | 7 | ······· |
| May the bed and this short night | 7 | ······· |
| Know the fulness of delight! | 7 | ··/˘·˘/ |
| Pleasures many here attend ye, | 7 | /˘/·˘/· |
| And, ere long, a boy Love send ye | 8 | ········ |
| Curled and comely, and so trim, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Maids, in time, may ravish him. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Thus a dew of graces fall | 7 | ····/˘· |
| On ye both; good-night to all. | 7 | ······· |
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.