Homer
And from the savage Urals to the plainA new barbarian folk shall send alarms,The coast of Agenorean Thebes againBe waked with sound of chariots and of arms;
And Rome shall fall; and Tiber's current drainThe nameless lands of long-deserted farms:But thou, like Hercules, shalt still remain,Untouched by fiery Etna's deadly charms;
And with thy youthful temples laurel-crownedShalt rise to the eternal Form's embraceWhose unveiled smile all earliest was thine;
And till the Alps to gulfing sea give place,By Latin shore or on Achæan ground,Like heaven's sun, shalt thou, O Homer, shine!
Words in this poem
- 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.]
- 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,]
- nameless a.
- Without a name; not having been given a name; as, a nameless star.
- shalt
- 2d per. sing. of Shall.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Homer is in the public domain. This text is taken from By Frank Sewall (London: Osgood, McIlvaine & Co., 1893), Project Gutenberg ebook #56711, the Frank Sewall 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: Giosuè Carducci, Homer, in Poems of Giosuè Carducci (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56711, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/carducci-poems/homer.html, id L26508.
Form and metre
Homer is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 2 of its 4 stanzas. 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 ABAB plainA · alarmsB · againA · armsB
- 2 ABAB drainA · farmsB · remainA · charmsB
- 3 CDE crownedC · embraceD · thineE
- 4 DCE placeD · groundC · shineE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| And from the savage Urals to the plain | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| A new barbarian folk shall send alarms, | 10 | ··˘/˘···˘/ |
| The coast of Agenorean Thebes again | 10 | ········˘/ |
| Be waked with sound of chariots and of arms; | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And Rome shall fall; and Tiber's current drain | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| The nameless lands of long-deserted farms: | 10 | ·/˘···˘/˘· |
| But thou, like Hercules, shalt still remain, | 10 | ···/˘···˘/ |
| Untouched by fiery Etna's deadly charms; | 10 | ˘/·/˘/˘/˘· |
| And with thy youthful temples laurel-crowned | 10 | ···/˘/˘/˘· |
| Shalt rise to the eternal Form's embrace | 10 | ····˘/˘·˘/ |
| Whose unveiled smile all earliest was thine; | 10 | ·˘/··/˘˘·· |
| And till the Alps to gulfing sea give place, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| By Latin shore or on Achæan ground, | 9 | ·/˘······ |
| Like heaven's sun, shalt thou, O Homer, shine! | 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.