664. To His Worthy Friend, M. Arthur Bartly
When after many lusters thou shalt beWrapt up in sear-cloth with thine ancestry;When of thy ragg'd escutcheons shall be seenSo little left, as if they ne'er had been;Thou shalt thy name have, and thy fame's best trust,Here with the generation of my Just.
Words in this poem
- shalt
- 2d per. sing. of Shall.
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
664. To His Worthy Friend, M. Arthur Bartly 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, 664. To His Worthy Friend, M. Arthur Bartly, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/664-to-his-worthy-friend-m-arthur-bartly.html, id L05614.
Form and metre
664. To His Worthy Friend, M. Arthur Bartly is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 be · ancestry · seen · been · trustA · justA
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| When after many lusters thou shalt be | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Wrapt up in sear-cloth with thine ancestry; | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| When of thy ragg'd escutcheons shall be seen | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| So little left, as if they ne'er had been; | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Thou shalt thy name have, and thy fame's best trust, | 10 | ·········· |
| Here with the generation of my Just. | 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.