A Prayer for Strength
Burdened with years and full of sinfulness,With evil custom grown inveterate,Both deaths I dread that close before me wait,Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less.
No strength I find in mine own feeblenessTo change or life or love or use or fate,Unless Thy heavenly guidance come, though late,Which only helps and stays our nothingness.
'Tis not enough, dear Lord, to make me yearnFor that celestial home, where yet my soulMay be new made, and not, as erst, of nought:
Nay, ere Thou strip her mortal vestment, turnMy steps toward the steep ascent, that wholeAnd pure before Thy face she may be brought.
Words in this poem
- inveterate a.
- Old; long-established. [L. inveteratus, p. p. of inveterare to render old; pref. in- in + vetus, veteris, old. See Veteran.]
- yearn v. t.
- To pain; to grieve; to vex. [Also earn, ern; probably a corruption of OE. ermen to grieve, AS. ierman, yrman, or geierman, geyrman, fr. earm wretched, poor; akin to D. & G. arm, Icel. armr,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Prayer for Strength is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sonnets, Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, the John Addington Symonds 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: Michelangelo Buonarroti, A Prayer for Strength, in Sonnets (1878), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #10314, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/michelangelo-sonnets/a-prayer-for-strength.html, id L15212.
Form and metre
A Prayer for Strength is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is BCD, complete in 2 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 88%). 94% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.1 syllables. 3 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending. 36% of the lines run on without a stop at the line end.
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 --A- sinfulness · inveterate · waitA · less
- 2 -AA- feebleness · fateA · lateA · nothingness
- 3 BCD yearnB · soulC · noughtD
- 4 BCD turnB · wholeC · broughtD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Burdened with years and full of sinfulness, | 10 | /˘········ |
| With evil custom grown inveterate, | 10 | ·/˘/˘·˘/˘˘ |
| Both deaths I dread that close before me wait, | 10 | ·········· |
| Yet feed my heart on poisonous thoughts no less. | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| No strength I find in mine own feebleness | 10 | ·······/˘˘ |
| To change or life or love or use or fate, | 10 | ·········· |
| Unless Thy heavenly guidance come, though late, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Which only helps and stays our nothingness. | 11 | ·/˘···/˘/˘˘ |
| 'Tis not enough, dear Lord, to make me yearn | 10 | ··˘/······ |
| For that celestial home, where yet my soul | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| May be new made, and not, as erst, of nought: | 10 | ·········· |
| Nay, ere Thou strip her mortal vestment, turn | 10 | ·····/˘/˘· |
| My steps toward the steep ascent, that whole | 10 | ······˘/·· |
| And pure before Thy face she may be brought. | 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.