72. Upon His Sister-In-Law, Mistress Elizabeth Herrick

Robert Herrick (1591–1674) · 1648

iambic tetrameter · rhyming couplets · 4 lines · from Hesperides

First, for effusions due unto the dead,My solemn vows have here accomplished:Next, how I love thee, that my grief must tell,Wherein thou liv'st for ever. Dear, farewell.

About this text

72. Upon His Sister-In-Law, Mistress Elizabeth Herrick 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, 72. Upon His Sister-In-Law, Mistress Elizabeth Herrick, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/72-upon-his-sister-in-law-mistress-elizabeth-herrick.html, id L05133.

Form and metre

72. Upon His Sister-In-Law, Mistress Elizabeth Herrick is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. The lines average 10.0 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. 1 --AA dead · accomplished · tellA · farewellA
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.

LineSyl.Stress
First, for effusions due unto the dead,10··········
My solemn vows have here accomplished:10·/˘···˘/˘˘
Next, how I love thee, that my grief must tell,10··········
Wherein thou liv'st for ever. Dear, farewell.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.

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