Fragment: 'O Thou Immortal Deity'
O thou immortal deityWhose throne is in the depth of human thought,I do adjure thy power and theeBy all that man may be, by all that he is not,By all that he has been and yet must be!
Words in this poem
- adjure v. t.
- To charge, bind, or command, solemnly, as if under oath, or under the penalty of a curse; to appeal to in the most solemn or impressive manner; to entreat earnestly. [L. adjurare, adjurdium, to swear to; later, to adjure: cf. F. adjurer. See Jury.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Fragment: 'O Thou Immortal Deity' 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: 'O Thou Immortal Deity', in The Complete Poetical Works, Volume II (1816–1819), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #4798, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/shelley-later-poems/fragment-o-thou-immortal-deity.html, id L16472.
Form and metre
Fragment: 'O Thou Immortal Deity' is 5 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 deity · thought · theeA · not · beA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O thou immortal deity | 8 | ··˘/˘/˘˘ |
| Whose throne is in the depth of human thought, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| I do adjure thy power and thee | 9 | ··˘/·/˘·· |
| By all that man may be, by all that he is not, | 12 | ············ |
| By all that he has been and yet must be! | 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.