The Human Comedy
Nature, by God directed, formed in spaceThe universal comedy we see;Wherein each star, each man, each entity,Each living creature, hath its part and place:
And when the play is over, it shall beThat God will judge with justice and with grace.--Aping this art divine, the human racePlans for itself on earth a comedy:
It makes kings, priests, slaves, heroes for the eyesOf vulgar folk; and gives them masks to playTheir several parts--not wisely, as we see;
For impious men too oft we canonise,And kill the saints; while spurious lords arrayTheir hosts against the real nobility.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- 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.]
- canonise v. t.
- To declare (a deceased person) a saint; to put in the catalogue of saints; as, Thomas a Becket was canonized. [F. canoniser or LL. canonizare, fr. L. canon.. See Canon.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Human Comedy 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, The Human Comedy, in Sonnets (1878), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/campanella-sonnets/the-human-comedy.html, id L27815.
Form and metre
The Human Comedy is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
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 AB-A spaceA · seeB · entity · placeA
- 2 BAA- beB · graceA · raceA · comedy
- 3 CDB eyesC · playD · seeB
- 4 CD- canoniseC · arrayD · nobility
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Nature, by God directed, formed in space | 10 | /˘··˘/˘··· |
| The universal comedy we see; | 10 | ··˘/˘/˘˘·· |
| Wherein each star, each man, each entity, | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Each living creature, hath its part and place: | 10 | ·/˘/˘····· |
| And when the play is over, it shall be | 10 | ·········· |
| That God will judge with justice and with grace.-- | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Aping this art divine, the human race | 10 | /˘··˘/·/˘· |
| Plans for itself on earth a comedy: | 10 | ··˘/···/˘˘ |
| It makes kings, priests, slaves, heroes for the eyes | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Of vulgar folk; and gives them masks to play | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Their several parts--not wisely, as we see; | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| For impious men too oft we canonise, | 11 | ·˘/˘····/˘· |
| And kill the saints; while spurious lords array | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| Their hosts against the real nobility. | 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.