On the Sepulchre of Christ, No. 1
O you who love the part more than the whole,And love yourself more than all human kind,Who persecute good men with prudence blindBecause they combat your malign control,See Scribes and Pharisees, each impious school,Each sect profane, o'erthrown by his great mind,Whose best our good to Deity refined,The while they thought Death triumphed o'er his soul.Deem you that only you have thought and sense,While heaven and all its wonders, sun and earth,Scorned in your dullness, lack intelligence?Fool! what produced you? These things gave you birth:So have they mind and God. Repent; be wise!Man fights but ill with Him who rules the skies.
Words in this poem
- deem v. t.
- To decide; to judge; to sentence; to condemn. [OE. demen to judge, condemn, AS. d, fr. d doom; akin to OFries. d, OS. ad, D. doemen, OHG. tuommen, Icel. dæma, Sw. dömma, Dan. dömme, Goth. d. See Doom, n., an]
- repent a.
- Prostrate and rooting; -- said of stems. Gray. [L. repens, -entis, creeping, p. pr. of repere to creep.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
On the Sepulchre of Christ, No. 1 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, On the Sepulchre of Christ, No. 1, in Sonnets (1878), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/campanella-sonnets/on-the-sepulchre-of-christ-no-1.html, id L27820.
Form and metre
On the Sepulchre of Christ, No. 1 is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%).
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-BBACDCDEE wholeA · kindB · blindB · controlA · school · mindB · refinedB · soulA · senseC · earthD · intelligenceC · birthD · wiseE · skiesE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O you who love the part more than the whole, | 10 | ·········· |
| And love yourself more than all human kind, | 10 | ··˘/···/˘· |
| Who persecute good men with prudence blind | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Because they combat your malign control, | 10 | ···/˘·˘/˘/ |
| See Scribes and Pharisees, each impious school, | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| Each sect profane, o'erthrown by his great mind, | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| Whose best our good to Deity refined, | 10 | ··/··/˘˘˘/ |
| The while they thought Death triumphed o'er his soul. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Deem you that only you have thought and sense, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| While heaven and all its wonders, sun and earth, | 10 | ·/···/˘··· |
| Scorned in your dullness, lack intelligence? | 10 | ···/˘·˘/˘˘ |
| Fool! what produced you? These things gave you birth: | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| So have they mind and God. Repent; be wise! | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| Man fights but ill with Him who rules the skies. | 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.