The Virtue of Woman
Man of virtue has need;-into life with boldness he plunges,Entering with fortune more sure into the hazardous strife;But to woman one virtue suffices; it is ever shiningLovingly forth to the heart; so let it shine to the eye!
Words in this poem
- strife n.
- The act of striving; earnest endeavor. [OF. estrif. See Strive.]
- lovingly adv.
- With love; affectionately.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Virtue of Woman 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 Virtue of Woman, in The Poems of Schiller: Third Period (1805), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #6796, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/schiller-third-period/the-virtue-of-woman.html, id L21855.
Form and metre
The Virtue of Woman 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 |
|---|---|---|
| Man of virtue has need;-into life with boldness he plunges, | 15 | ··/˘······/˘·/˘ |
| Entering with fortune more sure into the hazardous strife; | 13 | /˘·/˘·····/˘· |
| But to woman one virtue suffices; it is ever shining | 15 | ··/˘·/˘˘/˘··//˘ |
| Lovingly forth to the heart; so let it shine to the eye! | 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.