611. To His Muse
Go woo young Charles no more to lookThan but to read this in my book:How Herrick begs, if that he can-Not like the muse, to love the man,Who by the shepherds sung, long since,The star-led birth of Charles the Prince.
About this text
611. To His Muse 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, 611. To His Muse, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/611-to-his-muse.html, id L05570.
Form and metre
611. To His Muse is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.0 syllables.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AABBCC lookA · bookA · canB · manB · sinceC · princeC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Go woo young Charles no more to look | 8 | ········ |
| Than but to read this in my book: | 8 | ········ |
| How Herrick begs, if that he can- | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Not like the muse, to love the man, | 8 | ········ |
| Who by the shepherds sung, long since, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| The star-led birth of Charles the Prince. | 8 | ········ |
Notes from the edition 1
Word-glosses from Pollard's edition (Muses' Library, 1891; Project Gutenberg #22421).
- Long since: _i.e._, in the "Pastoral upon the Birth of Prince
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.