510. To His Kinswoman, Mrs. Penelope Wheeler
Next is your lot, fair, to be number'd one,Here, in my book's canonisation:Late you come in; but you a saint shall be,In chief, in this poetic liturgy.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
510. To His Kinswoman, Mrs. Penelope Wheeler 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, 510. To His Kinswoman, Mrs. Penelope Wheeler, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/510-to-his-kinswoman-mrs-penelope-wheeler.html, id L05487.
Form and metre
510. To His Kinswoman, Mrs. Penelope Wheeler is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 9.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Next is your lot, fair, to be number'd one, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Here, in my book's canonisation: | 9 | ········· |
| Late you come in; but you a saint shall be, | 10 | ·········· |
| In chief, in this poetic liturgy. | 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.