32. The Pomander Bracelet
To me my Julia lately sentA bracelet richly redolent:The beads I kissed, but most lov'd herThat did perfume the pomander.
Words in this poem
- redolent a.
- Diffusing odor or fragrance; spreading sweet scent; scented; odorous; smelling; -- usually followed by of. [L. redolens, -entis, p. pr. of redolere to emit a scent, diffuse an odor; pref. red-, re-, re- + olere to emit a smell. See Odor.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
32. The Pomander Bracelet 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, 32. The Pomander Bracelet, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/32-the-pomander-bracelet.html, id L05095.
Form and metre
32. The Pomander Bracelet is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 86% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.2 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic 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 AA-- sentA · redolentA · her · pomander
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| To me my Julia lately sent | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| A bracelet richly redolent: | 8 | ·/˘/˘/˘˘ |
| The beads I kissed, but most lov'd her | 9 | ····˘···· |
| That did perfume the pomander. | 8 | ··˘/·˘/˘ |
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.