Analysis of To his muse
Robert Herrick 1591 (London) – 1674 (Dean Prior)
Whither, mad maiden, wilt thou roam?
Far safer 'twere to stay at home;
Where thou mayst sit, and piping, please
The poor and private cottages.
Since cotes and hamlets best agree
With this thy meaner minstrelsy.
There with the reed thou mayst express
The shepherd's fleecy happiness;
And with thy Eclogues intermix:
Some smooth and harmless Bucolics.
There, on a hillock, thou mayst sing
Unto a handsome shepherdling;
Or to a girl, that keeps the neat,
With breath more sweet than violet.
There, there, perhaps such lines as these
May take the simple villages;
But for the court, the country wit
Is despicable unto it.
Stay then at home, and do not go
Or fly abroad to seek for woe;
Contempts in courts and cities dwell
No critic haunts the poor man's cell,
Where thou mayst hear thine own lines read
By no one tongue there censured.
That man's unwise will search for ill,
And may prevent it, sitting still.
Scheme | AABCDBEFGBHHIJBKJJLLMMNOPP |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 10110111 11011111 11110101 01010100 11010101 111101 11011101 01010100 011101 110101 11010111 100101 11011101 11111100 11011111 11010100 11010101 10100101 11110111 11011111 1010101 11010111 11111111 1111110 11011111 01011101 |
Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
Characters | 889 |
Words | 162 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 26 |
Lines Amount | 26 |
Letters per line (avg) | 27 |
Words per line (avg) | 6 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 714 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 160 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 49 sec read
- 93 Views
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