45. The Rosary
One ask'd me where the roses grew:I bade him not go seek,But forthwith bade my Julia showA bud in either cheek.
Words in this poem
- bade
- A form of the pat tense of Bid.
- forthwith adv.
- Immediately; without delay; directly.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
45. The Rosary 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, 45. The Rosary, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/45-the-rosary.html, id L05107.
Form and metre
45. The Rosary is 4 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables.
See 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 -A-A grew · seekA · show · cheekA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| One ask'd me where the roses grew: | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| I bade him not go seek, | 6 | ······ |
| But forthwith bade my Julia show | 8 | ·//····· |
| A bud in either cheek. | 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.