Robert Herrick’s Delight in Disorder and Ben Jonson’s Still to be Neat seem to focus on the same concept: that naturalness is more beautiful than perfection. When reading both, it is interesting to note how the two authors utilize contrasting rhythms to deliver their similar messages. Scansion revealed that the prosody of the two poems are iambic tetrameter. Though each line is most likely to have this format, both authors substitute some feet with foot arrangements other than iambs, which draws attention to those lines.
Herrick uses the iamb arrangement for the majority of the feet in his poem. This results in a light, bouncy rhythm throughout most of the text. By referring to the scansion, however, we can see that lines two and eight both start with a trochee, which brings emphasis to that line, and briefly breaks the set rhythm. Even so, Herrick’s poem has an overall happy tone, perhaps reflecting his excitement for imperfection. In Jonson’s poem, such iamb arrangement is not as frequent. About half of his lines are full of non-iambic feet, which makes it difficult for a consistent beat to be established. The choppiness of this meter gives a more serious tone than Herrick’s poem. Consistent with this tone, throughout the first stanza, Jonson shows his disinterest with women who make themselves “neat”. This tone continues onto the second stanza, where he explains his view on true beauty. This significant differences in both rhythm and tone between Delight in Disorder and Still to be Neat make the two poems drastically different, even though both are attempting to deliver the same message.
Introduction to Poetry 