Fragment 26, tr. Thomas Moore
O Muse, who sitt'st on golden throne,Full many a hymn of dulcet toneThe Teian sage is taught by thee;But, goddess, from thy throne of gold,The sweetest hymn thou'st ever toldHe lately learned and sang for me.
Words in this poem
- dulcet a.
- Sweet to the taste; luscious. [OF. doucet, dim. of dous sweet, F. doux, L. dulcis; akin to Gr. Doucet.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Fragment 26, tr. Thomas Moore is in the public domain. This text is taken from Sappho: Memoir, Text, Selected Renderings, and a Literal Translation (ed. Henry Thornton Wharton, John Lane, 1908, fifth edition), Project Gutenberg ebook #57390, the Various (ed. H. T. Wharton) 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: Sappho, Fragment 26, tr. Thomas Moore, in Sappho: Selected Renderings (1908), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #57390, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/sappho-wharton/fr-26.html, id L29177.
Form and metre
Fragment 26, tr. Thomas Moore is 6 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes AABCCB. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%).
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 AABCCB throneA · toneA · theeB · goldC · toldC · meB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O Muse, who sitt'st on golden throne, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Full many a hymn of dulcet tone | 8 | ·/···/˘· |
| The Teian sage is taught by thee; | 7 | ······· |
| But, goddess, from thy throne of gold, | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| The sweetest hymn thou'st ever told | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| He lately learned and sang for me. | 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.