568. Upon Irene
Angry if Irene beBut a minute's life with me:Such a fire I espyWalking in and out her eye,As at once I freeze and fry.
Words in this poem
- angry a.
- Troublesome; vexatious; rigorous. [See Anger.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
568. Upon Irene 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, 568. Upon Irene, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/568-upon-irene.html, id L05535.
Form and metre
568. Upon Irene is 5 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic 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-BB beA · meA · espy · eyeB · fryB
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Angry if Irene be | 6 | /˘·˘/· |
| But a minute's life with me: | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Such a fire I espy | 7 | ··/˘·/˘ |
| Walking in and out her eye, | 7 | /˘····· |
| As at once I freeze and fry. | 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.