The Poets
Some cry of Sappho’s lyre, of Saadi’s flute,Comes back across the waste of mortal things:Men strive and die to reach the Dead Sea fruit--Only the poets find immortal springs.
About this text
The Poets is in the public domain. This text is taken from The man with the hoe, and other poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #67012; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Edwin Markham, The Poets, in The Man with the Hoe, and Other Poems (1899), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #67012, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/markham-man-with-hoe/the-poets.html, id L24757.
Form and metre
The Poets is 4 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABAB. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
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 fluteA · thingsB · fruitA · springsB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Some cry of Sappho’s lyre, of Saadi’s flute, | 10 | ·········· |
| Comes back across the waste of mortal things: | 10 | ··˘/···/˘· |
| Men strive and die to reach the Dead Sea fruit-- | 10 | ·········· |
| Only the poets find immortal springs. | 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.