Majestas Populi
Majesty of the nature of man! In crowds shall I seek thee?'Tis with only a few that thou hast made thine abode.Only a few ever count; the rest are but blanks of no value,And the prizes are hid 'neath the vain stir that they make.
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,]
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- abode n.
- Act of waiting; delay. [OE. abad, abood, fr. abiden to abide. See Abide. For the change of vowel, cf. abode, imp. of abide.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Majestas Populi 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, Majestas Populi, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/majestas-populi.html, id L21898.
Form and metre
Majestas Populi 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Majesty of the nature of man! In crowds shall I seek thee? | 14 | /˘··/˘········ |
| 'Tis with only a few that thou hast made thine abode. | 13 | ··/˘·······˘/ |
| Only a few ever count; the rest are but blanks of no value, | 15 | /˘··/········/˘ |
| And the prizes are hid 'neath the vain stir that they make. | 13 | ··/˘········· |
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.