The Inquirers
Men now seek to explore each thing from within and without too!How canst thou make thy escape, Truth, from their eager pursuit?That they may catch thee, with nets and poles extended they seek theeBut with a spirit-like tread, glidest thou out of the throng.
Words in this poem
- explore v. t.
- To seek for or after; to strive to attain by search; to look wisely and carefully for. [L. explorare to explore; ex out+plorare to cry out aloud,prob. orig., to cause to flow; perh. akin to E. flow: cf. F. explorer.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Inquirers 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 Inquirers, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/the-inquirers.html, id L21907.
Form and metre
The Inquirers 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Men now seek to explore each thing from within and without too! | 15 | ····˘/········· |
| How canst thou make thy escape, Truth, from their eager pursuit? | 14 | ·····˘/···/˘˘/ |
| That they may catch thee, with nets and poles extended they seek thee | 15 | ·········˘/˘··· |
| But with a spirit-like tread, glidest thou out of the throng. | 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.