Fragment: "Amor Aeternus"
Wealth and dominion fade into the massOf the great sea of human right and wrong,When once from our possession they must pass;But love, though misdirected, is amongThe things which are immortal, and surpassAll that frail stuff which will be--or which was.
Words in this poem
- wealth n.
- Weal; welfare; prosperity; good. [OE. welthe, from wele; cf. D. weelde luxury. See Weal prosperity.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Fragment: "Amor Aeternus" is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley — Volume 2, Project Gutenberg ebook #4798; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Percy Bysshe Shelley, Fragment: "Amor Aeternus", in Ode to the West Wind, and Other Poems (1816–1819), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4798, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/shelley-later-poems/fragment-amor-aeternus.html, id L16327.
Form and metre
Fragment: "Amor Aeternus" is 6 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%). 96% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.0 syllables.
See 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 A-A-A- massA · wrong · passA · among · surpassA · was
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Wealth and dominion fade into the mass | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| Of the great sea of human right and wrong, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| When once from our possession they must pass; | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| But love, though misdirected, is among | 10 | ···˘˘/˘··· |
| The things which are immortal, and surpass | 10 | ····˘/˘·˘/ |
| All that frail stuff which will be--or which was. | 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.