71. Alms
Give, if thou canst, an alms; if not, afford,Instead of that, a sweet and gentle word:God crowns our goodness wheresoe'er He sees,On our part, wanting all abilities.
About this text
71. Alms 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, 71. Alms, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/71-alms.html, id L06082.
Form and metre
71. Alms is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. The lines average 10.2 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 --AA afford · word · seesA · abilitiesA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Give, if thou canst, an alms; if not, afford, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Instead of that, a sweet and gentle word: | 10 | ˘/·····/˘· |
| God crowns our goodness wheresoe'er He sees, | 10 | ··//˘····· |
| On our part, wanting all abilities. | 11 | ·/˘·/˘·˘/˘˘ |
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.