Analysis of Thales
Quod est ante pedes nemo spectat, caeli scrutantur plagas
–Cicero
... and he was fixed on Pleiades
Who moved across the tranquil night:
Her glinting gown, though hard to see,
Had brought him to her precious sight.
He plotted, mapped her silent course—
Made measurement of where she fled.
Her beauty, oh alluring force,
Had Thales go whereso she led.
And led he was through starry dark,
Through midnight glade and hill and dell
'Til suddenly, without a mark,
A well appeared, and Thales fell!
| Scheme | AX ABAB ACAC DEDE |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | |
| Metre | 1101101101111 101 0111110 11010101 01011111 11110101 11010101 11001111 01010101 111111 01111101 1110101 11000101 0101011 |
| Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
| Characters | 535 |
| Words | 101 |
| Sentences | 5 |
| Stanzas | 4 |
| Stanza Lengths | 2, 4, 4, 4 |
| Lines Amount | 14 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
| Words per line (avg) | 7 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 97 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 23 |
About this poem
Thales (pronounced ‘thay-leez’) is a pre-Socratic philosopher and polymath who endeavored to know as much as he could about the natural world, including the heavenly bodies. The fable of him stumbling into a pit because of his passionate fixation on celestial bodies was first expressed by Socrates in Plato’s dialogue, "Theaetetus". Socrates says there: “While he was studying the stars and looking upwards, he fell into a pit, and a neat, witty Thracian servant girl jeered at him, they say, because he was so eager to know the things in the sky that he could not see what was there before him at his very feet. " more »
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"Thales" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/138167/thales>.
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