Roma
Give to the wind thy locks; all glitteringThy sea-blue eyes, and thy white bosom bared,Mount to thy chariots, while in speechless roaringTerror and Force before thee clear the way!
The shadow of thy helmet like the flashingOf brazen star strikes through the trembling air.The dust of broken empires, cloud-like rising,Follows the awful rumbling of thy wheels.
So once, O Rome, beheld the conquered nationsThy image, object of their ancient dread.To-day a mitre they would place upon
Thy head, and fold a rosary betweenThy hands. O name! again to terrors oldAwake the tired ages and the world!
Words in this poem
- speechless a.
- Destitute or deprived of the faculty of speech.
- rumbling
- a. & n. from Rumble, v. i.
- mitre n.
- A covering for the head, worn on solemn occasions by church dignitaries. It has been made in many forms, the present form being a lofty cap with two points or peaks. Fairholt.
- rosary n.
- A bed of roses, or place where roses grow. [LL. rosarium a string of beads, L. rosarium a place planted with roses, rosa a rose: cf. F. rosaire. See Rose.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Roma 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, Roma, in Poems of Giosuè Carducci (1893), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56711, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/carducci-poems/roma.html, id L26506.
Form and metre
Roma is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Give to the wind thy locks; all glittering | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| Thy sea-blue eyes, and thy white bosom bared, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Mount to thy chariots, while in speechless roaring | 11 | ···/˘··/˘/˘ |
| Terror and Force before thee clear the way! | 10 | /˘········ |
| The shadow of thy helmet like the flashing | 11 | ·/···/˘··/˘ |
| Of brazen star strikes through the trembling air. | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| The dust of broken empires, cloud-like rising, | 11 | ···/˘/˘··/˘ |
| Follows the awful rumbling of thy wheels. | 10 | /˘·/˘/˘··· |
| So once, O Rome, beheld the conquered nations | 11 | ····˘/·/˘/˘ |
| Thy image, object of their ancient dread. | 10 | ·/˘/˘··/˘· |
| To-day a mitre they would place upon | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| Thy head, and fold a rosary between | 10 | ·····/˘˘·· |
| Thy hands. O name! again to terrors old | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| Awake the tired ages and the world! | 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.