368. Upon Prigg
Prigg, when he comes to houses, oft doth use,Rather than fail, to steal from thence old shoes:Sound or unsound be they, or rent or whole,Prigg bears away the body and the sole.
Words in this poem
- prigg v. i.
- To haggle about the price of a commodity; to bargain hard. [A modification of prick.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
368. Upon Prigg 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, 368. Upon Prigg, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/368-upon-prigg.html, id L06331.
Form and metre
368. Upon Prigg is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 useA · shoesA · wholeB · soleB
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Prigg, when he comes to houses, oft doth use, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Rather than fail, to steal from thence old shoes: | 10 | /˘········ |
| Sound or unsound be they, or rent or whole, | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| Prigg bears away the body and the sole. | 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.