466. To His Kinsman, Sir Thos. Soame
Seeing thee, Soame, I see a goodly man,And in that good a great patrician.Next to which two, among the city powersAnd thrones, thyself one of those senators;Not wearing purple only for the show,As many conscripts of the city do,But for true service, worthy of that gown,The golden chain, too, and the civic crown.
Words in this poem
- goodly a.
- Pleasant; agreeable; desirable. [OE. godlich, AS. g. See Good, and Like.]
- patrician a.
- Of or pertaining to the Roman patres (fathers) or senators, or patricians. [L. patricius, fr. patres fathers or senators, pl. of pater: cf. F. patricien. See Paternal.]
- civic a.
- Relating to, or derived from, a city or citizen; relating to man as a member of society, or to civil affairs. Civic crown (Rom. [L.civicus, fr. civis citizen. See City.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
466. To His Kinsman, Sir Thos. Soame 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, 466. To His Kinsman, Sir Thos. Soame, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/466-to-his-kinsman-sir-thos-soame.html, id L05448.
Form and metre
466. To His Kinsman, Sir Thos. Soame is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%). 91% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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----BB manA · patricianA · powers · senators · show · do · gownB · crownB
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Seeing thee, Soame, I see a goodly man, | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| And in that good a great patrician. | 9 | ······˘/˘ |
| Next to which two, among the city powers | 11 | ·······/˘/˘ |
| And thrones, thyself one of those senators; | 10 | ··˘/···/˘˘ |
| Not wearing purple only for the show, | 10 | ·/˘/˘/˘··· |
| As many conscripts of the city do, | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| But for true service, worthy of that gown, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| The golden chain, too, and the civic crown. | 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.