A Rendezvous
Nightly I put up this humble petition:"Forgive me, O Father of Glories,My sins of commission, my sins of omission,My sins of the Mission Dolores."
Words in this poem
- nightly a.
- Of or pertaining to the night, or to every night; happening or done by night, or every night; as, nightly shades; he kept nightly vigils.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Rendezvous is in the public domain. This text is taken from Shapes of Clay (1903), Project Gutenberg ebook #12658; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Ambrose Bierce, A Rendezvous, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/a-rendezvous.html, id L28147.
Form and metre
A Rendezvous is 4 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.
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- petitionA · glories · omissionA · dolores
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Nightly I put up this humble petition: | 11 | /˘····/˘˘/˘ |
| "Forgive me, O Father of Glories, | 9 | ˘/··/˘·/˘ |
| My sins of commission, my sins of omission, | 12 | ···˘/˘···˘/˘ |
| My sins of the Mission Dolores." | 9 | ····/˘˘/˘ |
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.