To Death
O Death, the wage of our first father's blame,Daughter of envy and nonentity,Serf of the serpent, and his harlotry,Thou beast most arrogant and void of shame!Thy last great conquest dost thou dare proclaim,Crying that all things are subdued to thee,Against the Almighty raised almightily?--The proofs that prop thy pride of state are lame.Not to serve thee, but to make thee serve Him,He stoops to Hell. The choice of arms was thine;Yet art thou scoffed at by the crucified!He lives--thy loss. He dies--from every limb,Mangled by thee, lightnings of godhead shine,From which thy darkness hath not where to hide.
Words in this poem
- wage v. i.
- To bind one's self; to engage.
- nonentity n.
- Nonexistence; the negation of being.
- harlotry n.
- Ribaldry; buffoonery; a ribald story. Piers Plowman.
- almightily adv.
- With almighty power.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To Death 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, To Death, in Sonnets (1878), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/campanella-sonnets/to-death.html, id L27819.
Form and metre
To Death is 14 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
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 A--AA--ABCDBCD blameA · nonentity · harlotry · shameA · proclaimA · thee · almightily · lameA · himB · thineC · crucifiedD · limbB · shineC · hideD
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 Death, the wage of our first father's blame, | 10 | ·····/·/˘· |
| Daughter of envy and nonentity, | 10 | /˘·/˘·˘/˘˘ |
| Serf of the serpent, and his harlotry, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘˘ |
| Thou beast most arrogant and void of shame! | 10 | ···/˘˘···· |
| Thy last great conquest dost thou dare proclaim, | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| Crying that all things are subdued to thee, | 10 | /˘····˘/·· |
| Against the Almighty raised almightily?-- | 11 | ···˘/˘·˘/˘˘ |
| The proofs that prop thy pride of state are lame. | 10 | ·········· |
| Not to serve thee, but to make thee serve Him, | 10 | ·········· |
| He stoops to Hell. The choice of arms was thine; | 10 | ·········· |
| Yet art thou scoffed at by the crucified! | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| He lives--thy loss. He dies--from every limb, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Mangled by thee, lightnings of godhead shine, | 10 | /˘··/˘·/·· |
| From which thy darkness hath not where to hide. | 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.