50. To Robin Redbreast
Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness beWith leaves and moss-work for to cover me:And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter,Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister!For epitaph, in foliage, next write this:Here, here the tomb of Robin Herrick is.
Words in this poem
- corpse n.
- A human body in general, whether living or dead; -- sometimes contemptuosly. [OF. cors (sometimes written corps), F. corps, L. corpus; akin to AS. hrif womb. See Midriff, and cf. Corse, Corselet, Corps, Cuerpo.]
- dirge n.
- A piece of music of a mournful character, to accompany funeral rites; a funeral hymn. [Contraction of Lat. dirige, direct thou (imperative of dirigere), the first word of a funeral hymn (Lat. transl. of Psalm v. 8) beginning, "Dirige, Domine, in c]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
50. To Robin Redbreast 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, 50. To Robin Redbreast, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/50-to-robin-redbreast.html, id L05112.
Form and metre
50. To Robin Redbreast is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 77%). 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See 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---- beA · meA · inter · chorister · this · is
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Laid out for dead, let thy last kindness be | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| With leaves and moss-work for to cover me: | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| And while the wood-nymphs my cold corpse inter, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Sing thou my dirge, sweet-warbling chorister! | 11 | ·····/˘˘/˘˘ |
| For epitaph, in foliage, next write this: | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Here, here the tomb of Robin Herrick is. | 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.