The Knights of St. John
Oh, nobly shone the fearful cross upon your mail afar,When Rhodes and Acre hailed your might, O lions of the war!When leading many a pilgrim horde, through wastes of Syrian gloom;Or standing with the cherub's sword before the holy tomb.Yet on your forms the apron seemed a nobler armor far,When by the sick man's bed ye stood, O lions of the war!When ye, the high-born, bowed your pride to tend the lowly weakness,The duty, though it brought no fame, fulfilled by Christian meekness--Religion of the cross, thou blend'st, as in a single flower,The twofold branches of the palm--humility and power.
Words in this poem
- nobly adv.
- Of noble extraction; as, nobly born or descended.
- afar adv.
- At, to, or from a great distance; far away; -- often used with from preceding, or off following; as, he was seen from afar; I saw him afar off. [Pref. a-.(for on or of) + far.]
- acre n.
- Any field of arable or pasture land. [OE. aker, AS. æcer; akin to OS. accar, OHG. achar, Ger. acker, Icel. akr, Sw. åker, Dan. ager, Goth. akrs, L. ager, Gr. ajra. *2, 206.]
- horde n.
- A wandering troop or gang; especially, a clan or tribe of a nomadic people migrating from place to place for the sake of pasturage, plunder, etc.; a predatory multitude. Thomson. [F. horde (cf. G. horde), fr. Turk. ord, ordi, camp; of Tartar origin.]
- meekness n.
- The quality or state of being meek.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Knights of St. John 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 Knights of St. John, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/the-knights-of-st-john.html, id L21866.
Form and metre
The Knights of St. John is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 60% of the lines. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 91%).
See other poems in rhyming couplets, other poems in iambic heptameter.
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.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 ABCCABDDEE afarA · warB · gloomC · tombC · farA · warB · weaknessD · meeknessD · flowerE · powerE
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 heptameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Oh, nobly shone the fearful cross upon your mail afar, | 14 | ·/˘··/˘·····˘/ |
| When Rhodes and Acre hailed your might, O lions of the war! | 14 | ···/˘····/˘··· |
| When leading many a pilgrim horde, through wastes of Syrian gloom; | 14 | ·/˘/·/˘····/˘· |
| Or standing with the cherub's sword before the holy tomb. | 14 | ·/˘··/˘····/˘· |
| Yet on your forms the apron seemed a nobler armor far, | 14 | ·····/˘··/˘/˘· |
| When by the sick man's bed ye stood, O lions of the war! | 14 | ·········/˘··· |
| When ye, the high-born, bowed your pride to tend the lowly weakness, | 15 | ···········/˘/˘ |
| The duty, though it brought no fame, fulfilled by Christian meekness-- | 15 | ·/˘·····˘/·/˘/˘ |
| Religion of the cross, thou blend'st, as in a single flower, | 15 | ˘/˘········/˘/˘ |
| The twofold branches of the palm--humility and power. | 15 | ·///˘···˘/˘˘·/˘ |
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.