574. Upon Umber
Umber was painting of a lion fierce,And, working it, by chance from Umber's erseFlew out a crack, so mighty, that the fart,As Umber states, did make his lion start.
Words in this poem
- erse n.
- A name sometimes given to that dialect of the Celtic which is spoken in the Highlands of Scotland; -- called, by the Highlanders, Gaelic. [A modification of Irish, OE. Irishe.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
574. Upon Umber 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, 574. Upon Umber, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/574-upon-umber.html, id L06376.
Form and metre
574. Upon Umber is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 AABB fierceA · erseA · fartB · startB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Umber was painting of a lion fierce, | 10 | /˘·/˘··/˘· |
| And, working it, by chance from Umber's erse | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Flew out a crack, so mighty, that the fart, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| As Umber states, did make his lion start. | 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.