Analysis of To his dying brother, master william herrick
Robert Herrick 1591 (London) – 1674 (Dean Prior)
Life of my life, take not so soon thy flight,
But stay the time till we have bade good-night.
Thou hast both wind and tide with thee; thy way
As soon dispatch'd is by the night as day.
Let us not then so rudely henceforth go
Till we have wept, kiss'd, sigh'd, shook hands, or so.
There's pain in parting, and a kind of hell
When once true lovers take their last farewell.
What? shall we two our endless leaves take here
Without a sad look, or a solemn tear?
He knows not love that hath not this truth proved,
Love is most loth to leave the thing beloved.
Pay we our vows and go; yet when we part,
Then, even then, I will bequeath my heart
Into thy loving hands; for I'll keep none
To warm my breast, when thou, my pulse, art gone,
No, here I'll last, and walk, a harmless shade,
About this urn, wherein thy dust is laid,
To guard it so, as nothing here shall be
Heavy, to hurt those sacred seeds of thee.
Scheme | AABBCCDDEFGHIIJKLLMM |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Tetractys (20%) Etheree (20%) |
Metre | 1111111111 1101111111 1111011111 1101110111 1111110111 1111111111 1101000111 111101111 11111010111 0101110101 1111111111 1111110101 11101011111 1101110111 0111011111 1111111111 1111010101 0111011111 1111110111 1011110111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 893 |
Words | 181 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 20 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 9 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 684 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 179 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 56 sec read
- 80 Views
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"To his dying brother, master william herrick" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 3 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/31441/to-his-dying-brother%2C-master-william-herrick>.
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