My Antipathy
I have a heartfelt aversion for crime,--a twofold aversion,Since 'tis the reason why man prates about virtue so much."What! thou hatest, then, virtue?"--I would that by all it were practised,So that, God willing, no man ever need speak of it more.
Words in this poem
- heartfelt a.
- Hearty; sincere.
- aversion n.
- A turning away. [L. aversio: cf. F. aversion. See Avert.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
My Antipathy 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, My Antipathy, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/my-antipathy.html, id L21900.
Form and metre
My Antipathy 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 |
|---|---|---|
| I have a heartfelt aversion for crime,--a twofold aversion, | 16 | ···/·˘/˘···//˘/˘ |
| Since 'tis the reason why man prates about virtue so much. | 14 | ···/˘·····/˘·· |
| "What! thou hatest, then, virtue?"--I would that by all it were practised, | 16 | ·····/˘········· |
| So that, God willing, no man ever need speak of it more. | 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.