977. To His Sister-In-Law, M. Susanna Herrick
The person crowns the place; your lot doth fallLast, yet to be with these a principal.Howe'er it fortuned; know for truth, I meantYou a fore-leader in this testament.
About this text
977. To His Sister-In-Law, M. Susanna Herrick 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, 977. To His Sister-In-Law, M. Susanna Herrick, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/977-to-his-sister-in-law-m-susanna-herrick.html, id L05884.
Form and metre
977. To His Sister-In-Law, M. Susanna Herrick is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets. The lines average 10.0 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 fallA · principalA · meantB · testamentB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The person crowns the place; your lot doth fall | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Last, yet to be with these a principal. | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Howe'er it fortuned; know for truth, I meant | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| You a fore-leader in this testament. | 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.