853. The Bedman, or Gravemaker
Thou hast made many houses for the dead;When my lot calls me to be buried,For love or pity, prithee let there beI' th' churchyard made one tenement for me.
Words in this poem
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- prithee interj.
- A corruption of pray thee; as, I prithee; generally used without I.
- churchyard n.
- The ground adjoining a church, in which the dead are buried; a cemetery.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
853. The Bedman, or Gravemaker 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, 853. The Bedman, or Gravemaker, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/853-the-bedman-or-gravemaker.html, id L05780.
Form and metre
853. The Bedman, or Gravemaker is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 9.8 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 AABB deadA · buriedA · beB · 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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Thou hast made many houses for the dead; | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| When my lot calls me to be buried, | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| For love or pity, prithee let there be | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| I' th' churchyard made one tenement for me. | 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.