The Philosophical Egotist
Hast thou the infant seen that yet, unknowing of the loveWhich warms and cradles, calmly sleeps the mother's heart above--Wandering from arm to arm, until the call of passion wakes,And glimmering on the conscious eye--the world in glory breaks?
And hast thou seen the mother there her anxious vigil keep?Buying with love that never sleeps the darling's happy sleep?With her own life she fans and feeds that weak life's trembling rays,And with the sweetness of the care, the care itself repays.
And dost thou Nature then blaspheme--that both the child and motherEach unto each unites, the while the one doth need the other?--All self-sufficing wilt thou from that lovely circle stand--That creature still to creature links in faith's familiar band?
Ah! dar'st thou, poor one, from the rest thy lonely self estrange?Eternal power itself is but all powers in interchange!
Words in this poem
- hast
- , 2d pers. sing. pres. of. Fave, contr. of havest.
- vigil n.
- Abstinence from sleep, whether at a time when sleep is customary or not; the act of keeping awake, or the state of being awake, or the state of being awake; sleeplessness; wakefulness; watch. [OE. vigile, L. vigilia, from vigil awake, watchful, probably akin to E. wake: cf. F. vigile. See Wake, v. i., and cf. Reveille, Surveillance, Vedette, Vegetable]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Philosophical Egotist 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 Philosophical Egotist, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/the-philosophical-egotist.html, id L21883.
Form and metre
The Philosophical Egotist is 14 lines in 4 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is AABB, complete in 3 of its 4 stanzas. The metre is iambic heptameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
See 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 AABB loveA · aboveA · wakesB · breaksB
- 2 AABB keepA · sleepA · raysB · repaysB
- 3 AABB motherA · otherA · standB · bandB
- 4 AA estrangeA · interchangeA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Hast thou the infant seen that yet, unknowing of the love | 14 | ···/˘···˘/˘··· |
| Which warms and cradles, calmly sleeps the mother's heart above-- | 14 | ···/˘/˘··/˘··· |
| Wandering from arm to arm, until the call of passion wakes, | 14 | /˘·········/˘· |
| And glimmering on the conscious eye--the world in glory breaks? | 14 | ·/˘··/˘····/˘· |
| And hast thou seen the mother there her anxious vigil keep? | 14 | ·····/˘··/˘/˘· |
| Buying with love that never sleeps the darling's happy sleep? | 14 | /˘···/˘··/˘/˘· |
| With her own life she fans and feeds that weak life's trembling rays, | 14 | ···········/˘· |
| And with the sweetness of the care, the care itself repays. | 14 | ···/˘·····˘/·/ |
| And dost thou Nature then blaspheme--that both the child and mother | 15 | ···/˘·˘/·····/˘ |
| Each unto each unites, the while the one doth need the other?-- | 15 | ····˘/·······/˘ |
| All self-sufficing wilt thou from that lovely circle stand-- | 14 | ··˘/˘····/˘/˘· |
| That creature still to creature links in faith's familiar band? | 14 | ·/˘··/˘···˘/˘· |
| Ah! dar'st thou, poor one, from the rest thy lonely self estrange? | 14 | ·········/˘·˘/ |
| Eternal power itself is but all powers in interchange! | 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.