Tantalus
He wooes for ever, with foil'd lips of drouth,The wave that wearies not to mock his mouth.'Tis Lethe's; they alone that tide have quaff'dWho never thirsted for the oblivious draught.
Words in this poem
- oblivious a.
- Promoting oblivion; causing forgetfulness. [L.obliviosus: cf.F. oblivieux.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Tantalus 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, Tantalus, in The Poems of William Watson (1892–1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #13179, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/watson-poems/tantalus.html, id L11319.
Form and metre
Tantalus is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: heroic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter. 92% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 9.8 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 AA-- drouthA · mouthA · quaff'd · draught
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 wooes for ever, with foil'd lips of drouth, | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| The wave that wearies not to mock his mouth. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| 'Tis Lethe's; they alone that tide have quaff'd | 9 | ···˘/···· |
| Who never thirsted for the oblivious draught. | 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.