900. Tears
Tears most prevail; with tears, too, thou may'st moveRocks to relent, and coyest maids to love.
Words in this poem
- relent v. i.
- To become less rigid or hard; to yield; to dissolve; to melt; to deliquesce. [F. ralentir, fr. L. pref. re- re- + ad to + lentus pliant, flexible, slow. See Lithe.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
900. Tears 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, 900. Tears, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/900-tears.html, id L05819.
Form and metre
900. Tears is 2 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 100% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.5 syllables.
See 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 AA moveA · loveA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Tears most prevail; with tears, too, thou may'st move | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| Rocks to relent, and coyest maids to love. | 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.