A Parable of Wise Men and the World
Once on a time the astronomers foresawThe coming of a star to madden men:Thus warned they fled the land, thinking that whenThe folk were crazed, they'd hold the reins of law
When they returned the realm to overawe,They prayed those maniacs to quit cave and den,And use their old good customs once again;But these made answer with fist, tooth, and claw:
So that the wise men were obliged to ruleThemselves like lunatics to shun grim death,Seeing the biggest maniac now was king.
Stifling their sense, they lived, aping the fool,In public praising act and word and thingJust as the whims of madmen swayed their breath.
Words in this poem
- madden v. t.
- To make mad; to drive to madness; to craze; to excite violently with passion; to make very angry; to enrage.
- folk n.
- In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]
- overawe v. t.
- To awe exceedingly; to subjugate or restrain by awe or great fear.
- biggest a.
- , superl. of Big.
- maniac a.
- Raving with madness; raging with disordered intellect; affected with mania; mad. [F. maniaque. See Mania.]
- swayed a.
- Bent down, and hollow in the back; sway-backed; -- said of a horse.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Parable of Wise Men and the World is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella, Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, the John Addington Symonds translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Tommaso Campanella, A Parable of Wise Men and the World, in Sonnets (1878), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/campanella-sonnets/a-parable-of-wise-men-and-the-world.html, id L27813.
Form and metre
A Parable of Wise Men and the World is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is ABBA, complete in 2 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABBA foresawA · menB · whenB · lawA
- 2 ABBA overaweA · denB · againB · clawA
- 3 CDE ruleC · deathD · kingE
- 4 CED foolC · thingE · breathD
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Once on a time the astronomers foresaw | 10 | ·····˘/˘·/ |
| The coming of a star to madden men: | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Thus warned they fled the land, thinking that when | 10 | ······/˘·· |
| The folk were crazed, they'd hold the reins of law | 10 | ·········· |
| When they returned the realm to overawe, | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| They prayed those maniacs to quit cave and den, | 11 | ···/˘······ |
| And use their old good customs once again; | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| But these made answer with fist, tooth, and claw: | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| So that the wise men were obliged to rule | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| Themselves like lunatics to shun grim death, | 10 | ˘/·/˘····· |
| Seeing the biggest maniac now was king. | 10 | /·/˘/˘···· |
| Stifling their sense, they lived, aping the fool, | 10 | /˘····/˘·· |
| In public praising act and word and thing | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| Just as the whims of madmen swayed their breath. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.