Jugurtha
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!Cried the African monarch, the splendid,As down to his death in the hollowDark dungeons of Rome he descended,Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended;How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
How cold are thy baths, Apollo!Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended,As the vision, that lured him to follow,With the mist and the darkness blended,And the dream of his life was ended;How cold are thy baths, Apollo!
About this text
Jugurtha is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Project Gutenberg ebook #1365; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Jugurtha, in The Complete Poetical Works (1839–1882), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #1365, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/longfellow-poems/jugurtha.html, id L17800.
Form and metre
Jugurtha is 12 lines in 2 stanzas of 6 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABABBA. The metre is anapaestic trimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%). 90% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.0 syllables. 11 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 8% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
See other poems in anapaestic trimeter.
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 ABABBA apolloA · splendidB · hollowA · descendedB · unattendedB · apolloA
- 2 ABABBA apolloA · unbefriendedB · followA · blendedB · endedB · apolloA
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 anapaestic trimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| How cold are thy baths, Apollo! | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| Cried the African monarch, the splendid, | 9 | ··/˘/··/˘ |
| As down to his death in the hollow | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Dark dungeons of Rome he descended, | 9 | ·/˘···˘/˘ |
| Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended; | 8 | ····˘˘/˘ |
| How cold are thy baths, Apollo! | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| How cold are thy baths, Apollo! | 8 | ·····˘/˘ |
| Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended, | 10 | ··/˘˘/···· |
| As the vision, that lured him to follow, | 10 | ··/˘····/˘ |
| With the mist and the darkness blended, | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| And the dream of his life was ended; | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| How cold are thy baths, Apollo! | 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.