Herrings
Be not sparing,Leave off swearing.Buy my herringFresh from Malahide,Better never was tried.Come, eat them with pure fresh butter and mustard,Their bellies are soft, and as white as a custard.Come, sixpence a-dozen, to get me some bread,Or, like my own herrings, I soon shall be dead.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Herrings is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume 1, Project Gutenberg ebook #14353; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Jonathan Swift, Herrings, in On Poetry: A Rhapsody, and Other Poems (1727), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #14353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/swift-poems-vol1/herrings.html, id L24582.
Form and metre
Herrings is 9 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 89% of the lines: heroic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
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 AAABBCCDD sparingA · swearingA · herringA · malahideB · triedB · mustardC · custardC · breadD · deadD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Be not sparing, | 4 | ··/˘ |
| Leave off swearing. | 4 | ··/˘ |
| Buy my herring | 4 | ··/˘ |
| Fresh from Malahide, | 5 | ···˘/ |
| Better never was tried. | 6 | /˘/˘·· |
| Come, eat them with pure fresh butter and mustard, | 11 | ······/˘·/˘ |
| Their bellies are soft, and as white as a custard. | 12 | ·/˘·······/˘ |
| Come, sixpence a-dozen, to get me some bread, | 11 | ·/˘·/˘····· |
| Or, like my own herrings, I soon shall be dead. | 11 | ····/˘····· |
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.