Antony at Actium
He holds a dubious balance:--yet that scale,Whose freight the world is, surely shall prevail?No; Cleopatra droppeth into thisOne counterpoising orient sultry kiss.
Words in this poem
- dubious a.
- Doubtful or not settled in opinion; being in doubt; wavering or fluctuating; undetermined. [L. dubius, dubiosus, fr. duo two. See Two, and cf. Doubt.]
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Antony at Actium is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Poems of William Watson, Project Gutenberg ebook #13179; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: William Watson, Antony at Actium, in The Poems of William Watson (1892–1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13179, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/watson-poems/antony-at-actium.html, id L11303.
Form and metre
Antony at Actium is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 88% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 10.2 syllables.
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 scaleA · prevailA · thisB · kissB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| He holds a dubious balance:--yet that scale, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Whose freight the world is, surely shall prevail? | 10 | ·····/˘·˘/ |
| No; Cleopatra droppeth into this | 10 | ··˘/˘/˘··· |
| One counterpoising orient sultry kiss. | 11 | ·····/˘·/˘· |
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.