Fifth Stasimon
CHORUS.Thou comest to bend the prideOf the hearts of God and man,Cypris; and by thy side,In earth-encircling span,He of the changing plumes,The Wing that the world illumes,As over the leagues of land flies he,Over the salt and sounding sea.
For mad is the heart of Love,And gold the gleam of his wing;And all to the spell thereofBend, when he makes his spring;All life that is wild and youngIn mountain and wave and stream,All that of earth is sprung,Or breathes in the red sunbeam;Yea, and Mankind. O'er all a royal throne,Cyprian, Cyprian, is thine alone!
Words in this poem
- cypris n.
- A genus of small, bivalve, freshwater Crustacea, belonging to the Ostracoda; also, a member of this genus. [L. Cypris, the Cyprian goddess Venus, Gr. Cyprian.]
- sunbeam n.
- A beam or ray of the sun. [AS. sunnebeam.]
- cyprian a.
- Belonging to Cyprus.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Fifth Stasimon is in the public domain. This text is taken from Hippolytus of Euripides, translated into English rhyming verse by Gilbert Murray (Harvard Classics reprint), Project Gutenberg ebook #8418, the Gilbert Murray 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: Euripides, Fifth Stasimon, in Hippolytus (1902), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #8418, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/euripides-hippolytus/fifth-stasimon.html, id L28796.
Form and metre
Fifth Stasimon is 19 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 -ABABCCDD chorus · prideA · manB · sideA · spanB · plumesC · illumesC · heD · seaD
- 2 ABABCDCDEE loveA · wingB · thereofA · springB · youngC · streamD · sprungC · sunbeamD · throneE · aloneE
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| CHORUS. | 2 | /˘ |
| Thou comest to bend the pride | 7 | ······· |
| Of the hearts of God and man, | 7 | ······· |
| Cypris; and by thy side, | 6 | /˘···· |
| In earth-encircling span, | 7 | ··˘/˘˘· |
| He of the changing plumes, | 6 | ···/˘· |
| The Wing that the world illumes, | 7 | ······· |
| As over the leagues of land flies he, | 8 | ········ |
| Over the salt and sounding sea. | 7 | ····/˘· |
| For mad is the heart of Love, | 7 | ······· |
| And gold the gleam of his wing; | 7 | ······· |
| And all to the spell thereof | 7 | ······· |
| Bend, when he makes his spring; | 6 | ······ |
| All life that is wild and young | 7 | ······· |
| In mountain and wave and stream, | 7 | ·/˘···· |
| All that of earth is sprung, | 6 | ······ |
| Or breathes in the red sunbeam; | 7 | ·····/· |
| Yea, and Mankind. O'er all a royal throne, | 10 | ··//···/˘· |
| Cyprian, Cyprian, is thine alone! | 8 | /˘/˘··˘/ |
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.