Analysis of A Poet's Home

George Wither 1588 (Bentworth) – 1667



Two pretty rills do meet, and meeting make
Within one valley a large silver lake:
About whose banks the fertile mountains stood
In ages passèd bravely crowned with wood,
Which lending cold-sweet shadows gave it grace
To be accounted Cynthia's bathing-place;
And from her father Neptune's brackish court,
Fair Thetis thither often would resort,
Attended by the fishes of the sea,
Which in those sweeter waters came to plea.
There would the daughter of the Sea God dive,
And thither came the Land Nymphs every eve
To wait upon her: bringing for her brows
Rich garlands of sweet flowers and beechy boughs.
For pleasant was that pool, and near it then
Was neither rotten marsh nor boggy fen,
It was nor overgrown with boisterous sedge,
Nor grew there rudely then along the edge
A bending willow, nor a prickly bush,
Nor broad-leaved flag, nor reed, nor knotty rush.
But here well-ordered was a grove with bowers,
There grassy plots set round about with flowers.
Here you might through the water see the land
Appear, strowed o'er with white or yellow sand;
Yon deeper was it, and the wind by whiffs
Would make it rise and wash the little cliffs
On which, oft pluming, sat unfrighted than
The gaggling wild-goose and the snow-white swan,
With all those flocks of fowls which to this day,
Upon those quiet waters breed and play.
For though those excellences wanting be
Which once it had, it is the same that we
By transposition name the Ford of Arle,
And out of which, along a chalky marle,
That river trills whose waters wash the fort
In which brave Arthur kept his royal court.
North-east, not far from this great pool, there lies
A tract of beechy mountains, that arise,
With leisurely ascending, to such height
As from their tops the warlike Isle of Wight
You in the ocean's bosom may espy,
Though near two furlongs thence it lie.
The pleasant way, as up those hills you climb,
Is strewèd o'er with marjoram and thyme,
Which grows unset. The hedgerows do not want
The cowslip, violet, primrose, nor a plant
That freshly scents: as birch, both green and tall;
Low sallows, on whose blooming bees do fall;
Fair woodbines, which about the hedges twine;
Smooth privet, and the sharp-sweet eglantine,
With many moe whose leaves and blossoms fair
The earth adorn and oft perfume the air.

When you unto the highest do attain
An intermixture both of wood and plain
You shall behold, which, though aloft it lie,
Hath downs for sheep and fields for husbandry,
So much, at least, as little needeth more,
If not enough to merchandise their store.

In every row hath nature planted there
Some banquet for the hungry passenger.
For here the hazel-nut and filbert grows,
There bullice, and, a little farther, sloes.
On this hand standeth a fair weilding-tree,
On that large thickets of blackberries be.
The shrubby fields are raspice orchards there,
The new felled woods like strawberry gardens are,
And had the King of Rivers blessed those hills
With some small number of such pretty rills
As flow elsewhere, Arcadia had not seen
A sweeter plot of earth than this had been.


Scheme AABBCCDDEEXXFFGGHHXXIIJJCXXXKKEELLDDMMNNELOOXXLLPPQQ RRLESS QXXCEEQXXCXX
Poetic Form Tetractys  (20%)
Metre 1101110101 0111001101 0111010101 0101110111 110111111 11010100101 010101101 110110101 0101010101 1011010111 1101010111 0110111001 1101010101 1111100101 1101110111 110101111 1110111001 1111010101 010110101 1111111101 11110101110 11011101110 1111010101 01110111101 1101100111 1111010101 1111111 011100111 1111111111 0111010101 1111101 1111110111 1110111 011101011 1101110101 0111011101 1111111111 0111010101 1100010111 111101111 1001010110 1111111 0101111111 11110110001 110101111 0101001101 1101111101 111110111 111010101 11001110 1101110101 0101010101 1110010101 1111101 1101110111 1111011100 111111011 110111011 01001110101 1101010100 1101010101 110010101 11110111 111101101 010111101 0111110101 0101110111 1111011101 1110100111 0101111111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 2,996
Words 535
Sentences 15
Stanzas 3
Stanza Lengths 52, 6, 12
Lines Amount 70
Letters per line (avg) 35
Words per line (avg) 8
Letters per stanza (avg) 809
Words per stanza (avg) 178
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 01, 2023

2:42 min read
68

George Wither

George Wither was an English poet, pamphleteer, and satirist. He was a prolific writer who adopted a deliberate plainness of style; he was several times imprisoned. C. V. Wedgwood wrote "every so often in the barren acres of his verse is a stretch enlivened by real wit and observation, or fired with a sudden intensity of feeling". more…

All George Wither poems | George Wither Books

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