546. To His Tomb-Maker
Go I must; when I am gone,Write but this upon my stone:Chaste I lived, without a wife,That's the story of my life.Strewings need none, every flowerIs in this word, bachelour.
Words in this poem
- bachelour n.
- A man of any age who has not been married. [OF. bacheler young man, F. bachelier (cf.Pr. bacalar, Sp.bachiller, Pg. bacharel, It. baccalare), LL. baccalarius the tenant of a kind of farm called baccalaria]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
546. To His Tomb-Maker 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, 546. To His Tomb-Maker, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/546-to-his-tomb-maker.html, id L05518.
Form and metre
546. To His Tomb-Maker is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 80%). 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.3 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See 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 --AA-- gone · stone · wifeA · lifeA · flower · bachelour
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Go I must; when I am gone, | 7 | ······· |
| Write but this upon my stone: | 7 | ······· |
| Chaste I lived, without a wife, | 7 | ······· |
| That's the story of my life. | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Strewings need none, every flower | 9 | ····/˘˘/˘ |
| Is in this word, bachelour. | 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.