III. 201
Thus it ever was and ever will be,Such of old is the world wide:The learned are many, the sages few,Acquaintance many, but not a friend!
About this text
III. 201 is in the public domain. This text is taken from Poems With Introduction and Notes, Project Gutenberg ebook #54991; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Alexander Pushkin, III. 201, in Poems (1888), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #54991, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/pushkin-poems/iii-201.html, id L25550.
Form and metre
III. 201 is 4 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Thus it ever was and ever will be, | 8 | ··/··/·· |
| Such of old is the world wide: | 7 | ······· |
| The learned are many, the sages few, | 8 | ···/·/˘· |
| Acquaintance many, but not a friend! | 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.