958. To the Most Comely and Proper M. Elizabeth Finch
Handsome you are, and proper you will beDespite of all your infortunity:Live long and lovely, but yet grow no lessIn that your own prefixed comeliness:Spend on that stock: and when your life must fall,Leave others beauty to set up withal.
Words in this poem
- withal adv.
- With this; with that. [With + all.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
958. To the Most Comely and Proper M. Elizabeth Finch 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, 958. To the Most Comely and Proper M. Elizabeth Finch, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/958-to-the-most-comely-and-proper-m-elizabeth-finch.html, id L05873.
Form and metre
958. To the Most Comely and Proper M. Elizabeth Finch is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 67% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 82%). 83% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 --AABB be · infortunity · lessA · comelinessA · fallB · withalB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Handsome you are, and proper you will be | 10 | /˘···/˘··· |
| Despite of all your infortunity: | 10 | ˘/········ |
| Live long and lovely, but yet grow no less | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| In that your own prefixed comeliness: | 10 | ····/˘˘/˘˘ |
| Spend on that stock: and when your life must fall, | 10 | ·········· |
| Leave others beauty to set up withal. | 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.