356. Upon Judith. Epig
Judith has cast her old skin and got new,And walks fresh varnish'd to the public view;Foul Judith was and foul she will be knownFor all this fair transfiguration.
Words in this poem
- transfiguration n.
- A change of form or appearance; especially, the supernatural change in the personal appearance of our Savior on the mount. [L. transfiguratio: cf. transfiguration.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
356. Upon Judith. 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, 356. Upon Judith. Epig, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/356-upon-judith-epig.html, id L05376.
Form and metre
356. Upon Judith. Epig 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. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.0 syllables.
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-- newA · viewA · known · transfiguration
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Judith has cast her old skin and got new, | 10 | /˘········ |
| And walks fresh varnish'd to the public view; | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Foul Judith was and foul she will be known | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| For all this fair transfiguration. | 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.