To the Poets
Valour to pride hath turned; grave holinessTo vile hypocrisy; all gentle waysTo empty forms; sound sense to idle lays;Pure love to heat; beauty to paint and dress:--Thanks to you, Poets! you who sing the praiseOf fabled knights, foul fires, lies, nullities;Not virtue, nor the wrapped sublimitiesOf God, as bards were wont in those old days.How far more wondrous than your phantasiesAre Nature's works, how far more sweet to sing!Thus taught, the soul falsehood and truth descries.That tale alone is worth the pondering,Which hath not smothered history in lies,And arms the soul against each sinful thing.
Words in this poem
- wondrous adv.
- In a wonderful or surprising manner or degree; wonderfully. [OE. wonders, adv. (later also adj.). See Wonder, n., and cf. -wards.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To the Poets 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 the Poets, in Sonnets (1878), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/campanella-sonnets/to-the-poets.html, id L27803.
Form and metre
To the Poets is 14 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBABCCBCDEDED. 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 ABBABCCBCDEDED holinessA · waysB · laysB · dressA · praiseB · nullitiesC · sublimitiesC · daysB · phantasiesC · singD · descriesE · ponderingD · liesE · thingD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Valour to pride hath turned; grave holiness | 10 | /˘·····/˘˘ |
| To vile hypocrisy; all gentle ways | 10 | ··˘/˘˘·/˘· |
| To empty forms; sound sense to idle lays; | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Pure love to heat; beauty to paint and dress:-- | 10 | ····/˘···· |
| Thanks to you, Poets! you who sing the praise | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Of fabled knights, foul fires, lies, nullities; | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Not virtue, nor the wrapped sublimities | 10 | ·/˘···˘··· |
| Of God, as bards were wont in those old days. | 10 | ·········· |
| How far more wondrous than your phantasies | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| Are Nature's works, how far more sweet to sing! | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Thus taught, the soul falsehood and truth descries. | 9 | ····/···· |
| That tale alone is worth the pondering, | 10 | ··˘/···/˘˘ |
| Which hath not smothered history in lies, | 10 | ···/˘/˘˘·· |
| And arms the soul against each sinful thing. | 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.