Song of the Bug
Now I sing to you the song of my kind that you do not understand,I, the tiny thing, swift dancing on a beam of light.A fillip for your understanding!
On I go in my own way doing my own work,Biting the tender legs of other little bugs,Spraying my spermatozoa on the warm ovaries of female bugs,Undermining the walls of tall man-made towers.
There is a certain dignity in my life if you could but understand it,You great bug that keep thinking such almighty thoughts,Hark to the little song of my kind.It would be well for you if you could understand that.
Words in this poem
- fillip v. t.
- To strike with the nail of the finger, first placed against the ball of the thumb, and forced from that position with a sudden spring; to snap with the finger. [For filp, flip. Cf. Flippant.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Song of the Bug is in the public domain. This text is taken from Mid-American Chants (New York: John Lane Company; London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1918), Internet Archive; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Sherwood Anderson, Song of the Bug, in Mid-American Chants (1918), text of Internet Archive, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/anderson-mid-american-chants/song-of-the-bug.html, id L29496.
Form and metre
Song of the Bug is 11 lines in 3 stanzas. The metre is trochaic hexameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 73%).
See other poems in trochaic hexameter.
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.
- 2 -AA- work · bugsA · bugsA · towers
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 trochaic hexameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Now I sing to you the song of my kind that you do not understand, | 17 | ···············˘/ |
| I, the tiny thing, swift dancing on a beam of light. | 13 | ··/˘··/˘····· |
| A fillip for your understanding! | 9 | ·/˘···˘/˘ |
| On I go in my own way doing my own work, | 12 | ·······/˘··· |
| Biting the tender legs of other little bugs, | 12 | /˘·/˘··/˘/˘· |
| Spraying my spermatozoa on the warm ovaries of female bugs, | 17 | /˘········/˘˘·/·· |
| Undermining the walls of tall man-made towers. | 12 | /˘·˘······/˘ |
| There is a certain dignity in my life if you could but understand it, | 19 | ···/˘/˘˘········˘/· |
| You great bug that keep thinking such almighty thoughts, | 12 | ·····/˘·˘/˘· |
| Hark to the little song of my kind. | 9 | ···/˘···· |
| It would be well for you if you could understand that. | 13 | ··········˘/· |
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.