922. Rest Refreshes
Lay by the good a while; a resting fieldWill, after ease, a richer harvest yield;Trees this year bear: next, they their wealth withhold:Continual reaping makes a land wax old.
Words in this poem
- wealth n.
- Weal; welfare; prosperity; good. [OE. welthe, from wele; cf. D. weelde luxury. See Weal prosperity.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
922. Rest Refreshes 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, 922. Rest Refreshes, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/922-rest-refreshes.html, id L05840.
Form and metre
922. Rest Refreshes 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 fieldA · yieldA · withholdB · oldB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Lay by the good a while; a resting field | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Will, after ease, a richer harvest yield; | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Trees this year bear: next, they their wealth withhold: | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Continual reaping makes a land wax old. | 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.