768. Courage Cooled

Robert Herrick (1591–1674) · 1648

iambic tetrameter · rhyming couplets · 4 lines · from Hesperides

I cannot love as I have lov'd before;For I'm grown old and, with mine age, grown poor.Love must be fed by wealth: this blood of mineMust needs wax cold, if wanting bread and wine.

Words in this poem

wealth n.
Weal; welfare; prosperity; good. [OE. welthe, from wele; cf. D. weelde luxury. See Weal prosperity.]
needs adv.
Of necessity; necessarily; indispensably; -- often with must, and equivalent to of need. [Orig. gen. of need, used as an adverb. Cf. - wards.]

Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.

About this text

768. Courage Cooled 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, 768. Courage Cooled, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/768-courage-cooled.html, id L05709.

Form and metre

768. Courage Cooled is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines. 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. 1 --AA before · poor · mineA · wineA
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
I cannot love as I have lov'd before;10·/˘·······
For I'm grown old and, with mine age, grown poor.10··········
Love must be fed by wealth: this blood of mine10··········
Must needs wax cold, if wanting bread and wine.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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