860. On Himself
If that my fate has now fulfill'd my year,And so soon stopt my longer living here;What was't, ye gods, a dying man to save,But while he met with his paternal grave!Though while we living 'bout the world do roam,We love to rest in peaceful urns at home,Where we may snug, and close together lieBy the dead bones of our dear ancestry.
About this text
860. On Himself 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, 860. On Himself, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/860-on-himself.html, id L05787.
Form and metre
860. On Himself is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 75% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 95% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 12% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 AABBCC-- yearA · hereA · saveB · graveB · roamC · homeC · lie · ancestry
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 |
|---|---|---|
| If that my fate has now fulfill'd my year, | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| And so soon stopt my longer living here; | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| What was't, ye gods, a dying man to save, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| But while he met with his paternal grave! | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| Though while we living 'bout the world do roam, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| We love to rest in peaceful urns at home, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Where we may snug, and close together lie | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| By the dead bones of our dear ancestry. | 11 | ·····/˘·/˘˘ |
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.