Evening (After a Picture.)
Oh! thou bright-beaming god, the plains are thirsting,Thirsting for freshening dew, and man is pining;Wearily move on thy horses--Let, then, thy chariot descend!
Seest thou her who, from ocean's crystal billows,Lovingly nods and smiles?--Thy heart must know her!Joyously speed on thy horses,--Tethys, the goddess, 'tis nods!
Swiftly from out his flaming chariot leaping,Into her arms he springs,--the reins takes Cupid,--Quietly stand the horses,Drinking the cooling flood.
Now from the heavens with gentle step descending,Balmy night appears, by sweet love followed;Mortals, rest ye, and love ye,--Phoebus, the loving one, rests!
Words in this poem
- wearily adv.
- In a weary manner.
- lovingly adv.
- With love; affectionately.
- tethys n.
- A genus of a large naked mollusks having a very large, broad, fringed cephalic disk, and branched dorsal gills. Some of the species become a foot long and are brilliantly colored.
- cupid
- The god of love, son of Venus; usually represented as a naked, winged boy with bow and arrow. [L.Cupido, fr. cupido desire, desire of love, fr. cupidus. See Cupidity.]
- cooling a.
- Adapted to cool and refresh; allaying heat.
- balmy a.
- Having the qualities of balm; odoriferous; aromatic; assuaging; soothing; refreshing; mild.
- phoebus n.
- Apollo; the sun god.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Evening (After a Picture.) 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, Evening (After a Picture.), in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/evening-after-a-picture.html, id L21819.
Form and metre
Evening (After a Picture.) is 16 lines in 4 stanzas of 4 lines each.
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.
- 3 -A-A leaping · cupidA · horses · floodA
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Oh! thou bright-beaming god, the plains are thirsting, | 11 | ···/˘····/˘ |
| Thirsting for freshening dew, and man is pining; | 11 | /˘·/˘····/˘ |
| Wearily move on thy horses-- | 8 | /˘˘···/˘ |
| Let, then, thy chariot descend! | 8 | ···/˘˘˘/ |
| Seest thou her who, from ocean's crystal billows, | 11 | ·····/˘/˘/˘ |
| Lovingly nods and smiles?--Thy heart must know her! | 10 | /˘········ |
| Joyously speed on thy horses,-- | 7 | ·····/˘ |
| Tethys, the goddess, 'tis nods! | 7 | /˘·/˘·· |
| Swiftly from out his flaming chariot leaping, | 11 | /˘···/˘/˘/˘ |
| Into her arms he springs,--the reins takes Cupid,-- | 11 | ·········/˘ |
| Quietly stand the horses, | 7 | /˘˘··/˘ |
| Drinking the cooling flood. | 6 | /˘·/˘· |
| Now from the heavens with gentle step descending, | 12 | ···/˘·/˘·˘/˘ |
| Balmy night appears, by sweet love followed; | 10 | /˘·˘/···/˘ |
| Mortals, rest ye, and love ye,-- | 7 | /˘····· |
| Phoebus, the loving one, rests! | 7 | /˘·/˘·· |
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.