The Agreement
Both of us seek for truth--in the world without thou dost seek it,I in the bosom within; both of us therefore succeed.If the eye be healthy, it sees from without the Creator;And if the heart, then within doubtless it mirrors the world.
Words in this poem
- doubtless a.
- Free from fear or suspicion.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Agreement 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, The Agreement, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/the-agreement.html, id L21896.
Form and metre
The Agreement 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Both of us seek for truth--in the world without thou dost seek it, | 15 | ··············· |
| I in the bosom within; both of us therefore succeed. | 14 | ···/˘·······˘/ |
| If the eye be healthy, it sees from without the Creator; | 15 | ····/˘······˘/˘ |
| And if the heart, then within doubtless it mirrors the world. | 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.