Aspiration
Lo! the wild rabbit, happy in the prideOf qualities to meaner beasts denied,Surveys the ass with reverence and fear,Adoring his superior length of ear,And says: "No living creature, lean or fat,But wishes in his heart to be like That!"
About this text
Aspiration 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, Aspiration, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/aspiration.html, id L28048.
Form and metre
Aspiration is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
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 AABBCC prideA · deniedA · fearB · earB · fatC · thatC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Lo! the wild rabbit, happy in the pride | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Of qualities to meaner beasts denied, | 10 | ·/˘˘·/˘·˘/ |
| Surveys the ass with reverence and fear, | 10 | ˘/···/˘˘·· |
| Adoring his superior length of ear, | 10 | ˘/˘·˘/˘··· |
| And says: "No living creature, lean or fat, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| But wishes in his heart to be like That!" | 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.