805. The Bride-Cake
This day, my Julia, thou must makeFor Mistress Bride the wedding-cake:Knead but the dough, and it will beTo paste of almonds turn'd by thee:Or kiss it thou but once or twice,And for the bride-cake there'll be spice.
Words in this poem
- knead v. t.
- To work and press into a mass, usually with the hands; esp., to work, as by repeated pressure with the knuckles, into a well mixed mass, as the materials of bread, cake, etc.; as, to knead dough. [OE. kneden, As. cnedan; akin to D. kneden, G. kneten, Sw. kn, Icel. kno; cf. OSlav.gnesti.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
805. The Bride-Cake 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, 805. The Bride-Cake, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/805-the-bride-cake.html, id L05740.
Form and metre
805. The Bride-Cake is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.2 syllables.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic 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 AABBCC makeA · cakeA · beB · theeB · twiceC · spiceC
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| This day, my Julia, thou must make | 8 | ········ |
| For Mistress Bride the wedding-cake: | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Knead but the dough, and it will be | 8 | ········ |
| To paste of almonds turn'd by thee: | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Or kiss it thou but once or twice, | 8 | ········ |
| And for the bride-cake there'll be spice. | 9 | ·····/˘·· |
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.