A Writer of Eclogues
Lycoris, Lycidas, and DryopeCannot, dear Niblo, save thy name from death;Shadows that fleet, and flowers that yield their breath,Match not the Love that craves infinity.The beauty thou dost worship dwells in thee:Within thy soul divine it harboureth:This also bids my spirit soar, and saithWords that unsphere for me heaven's harmony.Make then thine inborn lustre beam and shineWith love of goodness; goodness cannot fail:From God alone let praise immense be thine.My soul is tired of telling o'er the taleWith men: she calls on thine: she bids thee goInto God's school with tablets white as snow.
Words in this poem
- saith
- 3d pers. sing. pres. of Say.
- unsphere v. t.
- To remove, as a planet, from its sphere or orb. [1st pref. un- + sphere.]
- lustre n.
- A period of five years; a lustrum. [L. lustrum: cf. F. lustre.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Writer of Eclogues 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 Writer of Eclogues, in Sonnets (1878), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/campanella-sonnets/a-writer-of-eclogues.html, id L27856.
Form and metre
A Writer of Eclogues is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
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 -AA--AA-BCBCDD dryope · deathA · breathA · infinity · thee · harbourethA · saithA · harmony · shineB · failC · thineB · taleC · goD · snowD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Lycoris, Lycidas, and Dryope | 8 | ········ |
| Cannot, dear Niblo, save thy name from death; | 10 | /˘········ |
| Shadows that fleet, and flowers that yield their breath, | 10 | /····/···· |
| Match not the Love that craves infinity. | 10 | ······˘/˘˘ |
| The beauty thou dost worship dwells in thee: | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Within thy soul divine it harboureth: | 10 | ····˘/·/˘˘ |
| This also bids my spirit soar, and saith | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Words that unsphere for me heaven's harmony. | 11 | ··˘/··/˘/˘˘ |
| Make then thine inborn lustre beam and shine | 10 | ···/·/˘··· |
| With love of goodness; goodness cannot fail: | 10 | ···/˘/˘/˘· |
| From God alone let praise immense be thine. | 10 | ··˘/··˘/·· |
| My soul is tired of telling o'er the tale | 10 | ···/·/˘··· |
| With men: she calls on thine: she bids thee go | 10 | ·········· |
| Into God's school with tablets white as snow. | 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.