803. To Sappho
Sappho, I will choose to goWhere the northern winds do blowEndless ice and endless snow:Rather than I once would seeBut a winter's face in thee,To benumb my hopes and me.
Words in this poem
- sappho n.
- Any one of several species of brilliant South American humming birds of the genus Sappho, having very bright-colored and deeply forked tails; -- called also firetail. [See Sapphic.]
- benumb v. t.
- To make torpid; to deprive of sensation or sensibility; to stupefy; as, a hand or foot benumbed by cold. [OE. binomen, p. p. of binimen to take away, AS. beniman; pref. be + niman to take. See Numb, a., and cf. Benim.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
803. To Sappho 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, 803. To Sappho, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/803-to-sappho.html, id L05738.
Form and metre
803. To Sappho is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 7.0 syllables.
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in trochaic 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 AAABBB goA · blowA · snowA · seeB · theeB · meB
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 trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Sappho, I will choose to go | 7 | /˘····· |
| Where the northern winds do blow | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Endless ice and endless snow: | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| Rather than I once would see | 7 | /˘····· |
| But a winter's face in thee, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| To benumb my hopes and me. | 7 | ·˘/···· |
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.