The True Kings
Nero was king by accident in show;But Socrates by nature in good sooth;By right of both Augustus; luck and truthLess perfectly were blent in Scipio.
The spurious prince still seeks to extirpateThe seed of natures born imperial--Like Herod, Caiaphas, Meletus, allWho by bad acts sustain their stolen state.
Slaves whose souls tell them that they are but slaves,Strike those whose native kinghood all can see:Martyrdom is the stamp of royalty.
Dead though they be, these govern from their graves:The tyrants fall, nor can their laws remain;While Paul and Peter rise o'er Rome to reign.
Words in this poem
- nero n.
- A Roman emperor notorius for debauchery and barbarous cruelty; hence, any profligate and cruel ruler or merciless tyrant.
- sooth a.
- True; faithful; trustworthy. [OE. soth, AS. s, for san; akin to OS. s, OHG. sand, Icel. sannr, Sw. sann, Dan. sand, Skr. sat, sant, real, genuine, present, being; properly p. pr. from a root]
- blent p. p.
- Blinded. Also (Chaucer), 3d sing. pres. Blindeth.
- kinghood n.
- The state of being a king; the attributes of a king; kingship.
- martyrdom n.
- The condition of a martyr; the death of a martyr; the suffering of death on account of adherence to the Christian faith, or to any cause. [Martyr + -dom.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The True Kings 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 True Kings, in Sonnets (1878), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/campanella-sonnets/the-true-kings.html, id L27816.
Form and metre
The True Kings 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 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 ABBA showA · soothB · truthB · scipioA
- 2 ABBA extirpateA · imperialB · allB · stateA
- 4 -AA graves · remainA · reignA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Nero was king by accident in show; | 10 | /˘···/˘˘·· |
| But Socrates by nature in good sooth; | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| By right of both Augustus; luck and truth | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
| Less perfectly were blent in Scipio. | 10 | ·/˘˘···/˘˘ |
| The spurious prince still seeks to extirpate | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| The seed of natures born imperial-- | 10 | ···/˘·˘/˘˘ |
| Like Herod, Caiaphas, Meletus, all | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| Who by bad acts sustain their stolen state. | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| Slaves whose souls tell them that they are but slaves, | 10 | ·········· |
| Strike those whose native kinghood all can see: | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Martyrdom is the stamp of royalty. | 10 | /˘˘····/˘˘ |
| Dead though they be, these govern from their graves: | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| The tyrants fall, nor can their laws remain; | 10 | ·/˘·····˘/ |
| While Paul and Peter rise o'er Rome to reign. | 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.