Analysis of What Kind Of Mistress He Would Have

Robert Herrick 1591 (London) – 1674 (Dean Prior)



Be the mistress of my choice,
Clean in manners, clear in voice;
Be she witty, more than wise,
Pure enough, though not precise;
Be she showing in her dress,
Like a civil wilderness,
That the curious may detect
Order in a sweet neglect;
Be she rolling in her eye,
Tempting all the passers by;
And each ringlet of her hair,
An enchantment, or a snare,
For to catch the lookers on;
But herself held fast by none.
Let her Lucrece all day be,
Thais in the night, to me.
Be she such, as neither will
Famish me, nor overfill.


Scheme AABCDEFFGGHHIJKKLL
Poetic Form
Metre 1010111 1010101 1110111 1011101 1110001 1010100 10100101 1000101 1110001 1010101 011101 1010101 1110101 1011111 101111 100111 1111101 11110
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 508
Words 101
Sentences 4
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 18
Lines Amount 18
Letters per line (avg) 22
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 396
Words per stanza (avg) 99
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

30 sec read
120

Robert Herrick

Robert Herrick was born in London, England, in 1591. He was apprenticed to a goldsmith (his uncle, Sir William), but went to Cambridge, at St John's, in 1613. He was ordained at Peterborough in 1623 and became chaplain to the Duke of Buckingham a few years later. "Hesperides" - a collection of 1200 lyrical poems - was published in 1648 and it remained his magnum opus. Herrick died in 1674, aged 83. more…

All Robert Herrick poems | Robert Herrick Books

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