826. Bad Princes Pill the People
Like those infernal deities which eatThe best of all the sacrificed meat;And leave their servants but the smoke and sweat:So many kings, and primates too there are,Who claim the fat and fleshy for their shareAnd leave their subjects but the starved ware.
About this text
826. Bad Princes Pill the People 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, 826. Bad Princes Pill the People, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/826-bad-princes-pill-the-people.html, id L05759.
Form and metre
826. Bad Princes Pill the People is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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--BB eatA · meatA · sweat · are · shareB · wareB
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Like those infernal deities which eat | 10 | ··˘/˘/˘˘·· |
| The best of all the sacrificed meat; | 10 | ·····/˘·˘· |
| And leave their servants but the smoke and sweat: | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| So many kings, and primates too there are, | 10 | ·/˘··/···· |
| Who claim the fat and fleshy for their share | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And leave their subjects but the starved ware. | 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.