Columbus
Steer on, bold sailor--Wit may mock thy soul that sees the land,And hopeless at the helm may droop the weak and weary hand,Yet ever--ever to the West, for there the coast must lie,And dim it dawns, and glimmering dawns before thy reason's eye;Yea, trust the guiding God--and go along the floating grave,Though hid till now--yet now behold the New World o'er the wave!With genius Nature ever stands in solemn union still,And ever what the one foretells the other shall fulfil.
Words in this poem
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Columbus 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, Columbus, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/columbus.html, id L21890.
Form and metre
Columbus is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 75% of the lines. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in iambic heptameter.
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 AABBCC-- landA · handA · lieB · eyeB · graveC · waveC · still · fulfil
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 heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Steer on, bold sailor--Wit may mock thy soul that sees the land, | 14 | ···/˘········· |
| And hopeless at the helm may droop the weak and weary hand, | 14 | ·/˘········/˘· |
| Yet ever--ever to the West, for there the coast must lie, | 14 | ·/˘/˘········· |
| And dim it dawns, and glimmering dawns before thy reason's eye; | 14 | ·····/˘····/˘· |
| Yea, trust the guiding God--and go along the floating grave, | 14 | ···/˘···˘/·/˘· |
| Though hid till now--yet now behold the New World o'er the wave! | 14 | ······˘/······ |
| With genius Nature ever stands in solemn union still, | 14 | ·/˘/˘/˘··/˘/˘· |
| And ever what the one foretells the other shall fulfil. | 14 | ·/˘···˘/·/˘··· |
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.