Earthly and Divine Love
God gives us life, and God our life preserves;Nay, all our happiness on Him doth rest:Why then should love of God inflame man's breastLess than his lady and the lord he serves?Through mean and wanton ignorance he swerves,And worships a false Good, divinely dressed;Love cannot soar to what it never guessed,But stoops its flight, and the thralled soul unnerves.Here too is man deceived. He yields his ownTo spend on others. Yet in vile delightGod's splendour still shines through love's earthliness.But we embrace the loss, the lure aloneLove fools us with. That glimpse of heavenly light,That foretaste of eternal Good, we miss.
Words in this poem
- splendour n.
- Great brightness; brilliant luster; brilliancy; as, the splendor ot the sun. B. Jonson. [L. fr. splendere to shine: cf. F. splendeur.]
- earthliness n.
- The quality or state of being earthly; worldliness; grossness; perishableness.
- foretaste n.
- A taste beforehand; enjoyment in advance; anticipation.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Earthly and Divine Love 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, Earthly and Divine Love, in Sonnets (1878), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/campanella-sonnets/earthly-and-divine-love.html, id L27811.
Form and metre
Earthly and Divine Love is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
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 ABBAABBACD-CD- preservesA · restB · breastB · servesA · swervesA · dressedB · guessedB · unnervesA · ownC · delightD · earthliness · aloneC · lightD · miss
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 |
|---|---|---|
| God gives us life, and God our life preserves; | 10 | ······/·˘/ |
| Nay, all our happiness on Him doth rest: | 10 | ··//˘˘···· |
| Why then should love of God inflame man's breast | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| Less than his lady and the lord he serves? | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Through mean and wanton ignorance he swerves, | 10 | ···/˘/˘˘·· |
| And worships a false Good, divinely dressed; | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| Love cannot soar to what it never guessed, | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| But stoops its flight, and the thralled soul unnerves. | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Here too is man deceived. He yields his own | 10 | ····˘/···· |
| To spend on others. Yet in vile delight | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| God's splendour still shines through love's earthliness. | 10 | ·/˘····/˘˘ |
| But we embrace the loss, the lure alone | 10 | ··˘/····˘/ |
| Love fools us with. That glimpse of heavenly light, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| That foretaste of eternal Good, we miss. | 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.