53. Cherry-Ripe
Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry,Full and fair ones; come and buy.If so be you ask me whereThey do grow, I answer: There,Where my Julia's lips do smile;There's the land, or cherry-isle,Whose plantations fully showAll the year where cherries grow.
Words in this poem
- isle v. t.
- To cause to become an island, or like an island; to surround or encompass; to island.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
53. Cherry-Ripe 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, 53. Cherry-Ripe, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/53-cherry-ripe.html, id L05115.
Form and metre
53. Cherry-Ripe is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables. 25% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in trochaic 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 AABBCCDD cryA · buyA · whereB · thereB · smileC · isleC · showD · growD
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Cherry-ripe, ripe, ripe, I cry, | 7 | /˘····· |
| Full and fair ones; come and buy. | 7 | ······· |
| If so be you ask me where | 7 | ······· |
| They do grow, I answer: There, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Where my Julia's lips do smile; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| There's the land, or cherry-isle, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Whose plantations fully show | 7 | ··/˘/˘· |
| All the year where cherries grow. | 7 | ····/˘· |
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.