Archimedes
To Archimedes once a scholar came,"Teach me," he said, "the art that won thy fame;--The godlike art which gives such boons to toil,And showers such fruit upon thy native soil;--The godlike art that girt the town when allRome's vengeance burst in thunder on the wall!""Thou call'st art godlike--it is so, in truth,And was," replied the master to the youth,"Ere yet its secrets were applied to use--Ere yet it served beleaguered Syracuse:--Ask'st thou from art, but what the art is worth?The fruit?--for fruit go cultivate the earth.--He who the goddess would aspire unto,Must not the goddess as the woman woo!"
Words in this poem
- archimedes n.
- An extinct genus of Bryzoa characteristic of the subcarboniferous rocks. Its form is that of a screw.
- girt v. t.
- To gird; to encircle; to invest by means of a girdle; to measure the girth of; as, to girt a tree. [From Girt, n., cf. Girth, v.]
- syracuse n.
- A red wine of Italy.
- aspire v. t.
- To aspire to; to long for; to try to reach; to mount to.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Archimedes is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of Schiller — Third period, Project Gutenberg ebook #6796; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Friedrich Schiller, Archimedes, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/archimedes.html, id L21878.
Form and metre
Archimedes is 14 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 86% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, 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 AABBCCDDEEFF-- cameA · fameA · toilB · soilB · allC · wallC · truthD · youthD · useE · syracuseE · worthF · earthF · unto · woo
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 |
|---|---|---|
| To Archimedes once a scholar came, | 10 | ··˘/˘··/˘· |
| "Teach me," he said, "the art that won thy fame;-- | 10 | ·········· |
| The godlike art which gives such boons to toil, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| And showers such fruit upon thy native soil;-- | 10 | ·/·····/˘· |
| The godlike art that girt the town when all | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Rome's vengeance burst in thunder on the wall!" | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| "Thou call'st art godlike--it is so, in truth, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| And was," replied the master to the youth, | 10 | ··˘/·/˘··· |
| "Ere yet its secrets were applied to use-- | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
| Ere yet it served beleaguered Syracuse:-- | 10 | ····˘/˘/˘· |
| Ask'st thou from art, but what the art is worth? | 10 | ·········· |
| The fruit?--for fruit go cultivate the earth.-- | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| He who the goddess would aspire unto, | 10 | ···/˘·˘/·· |
| Must not the goddess as the woman woo!" | 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.