The Imitator
Good from the good,--to the reason this is not hard of conception;But the genius has power good from the bad to evoke.'Tis the conceived alone, that thou, imitator, canst practise;Food the conceived never is, save to the mind that conceives.
Words in this poem
- evoke v. t.
- To call out; to summon forth. [L. evocare; e out + vocare to call, fr. vox, vocis, voice: cf. F évoquer. See Voice, and cf. Evocate.]
- imitator n.
- One who imitates. [L.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Imitator 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 Imitator, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/the-imitator.html, id L21905.
Form and metre
The Imitator 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Good from the good,--to the reason this is not hard of conception; | 16 | ······/˘·····˘/˘ |
| But the genius has power good from the bad to evoke. | 13 | ··/˘·/·····˘/ |
| 'Tis the conceived alone, that thou, imitator, canst practise; | 15 | ··˘/˘/··/˘·˘·/˘ |
| Food the conceived never is, save to the mind that conceives. | 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.