The Merchant
Where sails the ship?--It leads the Tyrian forthFor the rich amber of the liberal north.Be kind, ye seas--winds, lend your gentlest wing,May in each creek sweet wells restoring spring!--To you, ye gods, belong the merchant!--o'erThe waves his sails the wide world's goods explore;And, all the while, wherever waft the galesThe wide world's good sails with him as he sails!
Words in this poem
- tyrian a.
- Of or pertaining to Tyre or its people.
- 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.]
- wherever adv.
- At or in whatever place; wheresoever.
- waft v. t.
- To give notice to by waving something; to wave the hand to; to beckon. [Prob. originally imp. & p. p. of wave, v. t. See Wave to waver.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Merchant 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 Merchant, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/the-merchant.html, id L21867.
Form and metre
The Merchant is 8 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 75% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 84%).
See other poems in heroic couplets, other poems in iambic pentameter.
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 AABB--CC forthA · northA · wingB · springB · o'er · explore · galesC · sailsC
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 pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Where sails the ship?--It leads the Tyrian forth | 11 | ·······/˘˘· |
| For the rich amber of the liberal north. | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| Be kind, ye seas--winds, lend your gentlest wing, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| May in each creek sweet wells restoring spring!-- | 10 | ······˘/˘· |
| To you, ye gods, belong the merchant!--o'er | 10 | ····˘/·/˘· |
| The waves his sails the wide world's goods explore; | 10 | ········˘/ |
| And, all the while, wherever waft the gales | 10 | ····˘/˘··· |
| The wide world's good sails with him as he sails! | 10 | ·········· |
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.