871. To Apollo
Thou mighty lord and master of the lyre,Unshorn Apollo, come and re-inspireMy fingers so, the lyric-strings to move,That I may play and sing a hymn to Love.
About this text
871. To Apollo 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, 871. To Apollo, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/871-to-apollo.html, id L05798.
Form and metre
871. To Apollo is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
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 lyreA · inspireA · moveB · loveB
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 mighty lord and master of the lyre, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Unshorn Apollo, come and re-inspire | 10 | ··˘/˘···˘/ |
| My fingers so, the lyric-strings to move, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| That I may play and sing a hymn to Love. | 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.