992. To the Handsome Mistress Grace Potter
As is your name, so is your comely faceTouch'd everywhere with such diffused grace,As that in all that admirable roundThere is not one least solecism found;And as that part, so every portion elseKeeps line for line with beauty's parallels.
Words in this poem
- admirable a.
- Fitted to excite wonder; wonderful; marvelous. [L. admirabilis: cf. F. admirable.]
- solecism n.
- An impropriety or incongruity of language in the combination of words or parts of a sentence; esp., deviation from the idiom of a language or from the rules of syntax. [F. solécisme, L. soloecismus, Gr. soloikismo`s, fr. soloiki`zein to speak or write incorrectly, fr. so`loikos speaking incorrectly, from the corruption of the A]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
992. To the Handsome Mistress Grace Potter 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, 992. To the Handsome Mistress Grace Potter, in Hesperides (1648), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #22421, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/herrick-hesperides/992-to-the-handsome-mistress-grace-potter.html, id L05896.
Form and metre
992. To the Handsome Mistress Grace Potter 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 85%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables.
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-- faceA · graceA · roundB · foundB · else · parallels
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 |
|---|---|---|
| As is your name, so is your comely face | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Touch'd everywhere with such diffused grace, | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| As that in all that admirable round | 10 | ·····/˘˘˘· |
| There is not one least solecism found; | 9 | ·····/˘˘· |
| And as that part, so every portion else | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| Keeps line for line with beauty's parallels. | 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.