96. A Christmas Carol Sung to the King in the Presence at Whitehall
Chor. What sweeter music can we bring,Than a carol for to singThe birth of this our heavenly King?Awake the voice! awake the string!Heart, ear, and eye, and everythingAwake! the while the active fingerRuns division with the singer.
Words in this poem
- carol v. t.
- To praise or celebrate in song.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
96. A Christmas Carol Sung to the King in the Presence at Whitehall 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, 96. A Christmas Carol Sung to the King in the Presence at Whitehall, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/96-a-christmas-carol-sung-to-the-king-in-the-presence-at-whi.html, id L06107.
Form and metre
96. A Christmas Carol Sung to the King in the Presence at Whitehall is 7 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 57% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter. 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 8.4 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, 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 AAAAA-- bringA · singA · kingA · stringA · everythingA · finger · singer
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Chor. What sweeter music can we bring, | 9 | ··/˘/˘··· |
| Than a carol for to sing | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| The birth of this our heavenly King? | 10 | ····/˘/˘˘· |
| Awake the voice! awake the string! | 8 | ˘/··˘/·· |
| Heart, ear, and eye, and everything | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Awake! the while the active finger | 9 | ˘/···/˘/˘ |
| Runs division with the singer. | 8 | ·˘/˘··/˘ |
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.