Incurable
From pride, joy, hate, greed, melancholy--From any kind of vice, or folly,Bias, propensity or passionThat is in prevalence and fashion,Save one, the sufferer or loverMay, by the grace of God, recover:Alone that spiritual tetter,The zeal to make creation better,Glows still immedicably warmer.Who knows of a reformed reformer?
Words in this poem
- greed n.
- An eager desire or longing; greediness; as, a greed of gain. [Akin to Goth. grdus hunger, Icel. graedhr. sq. root34. See Greedy.]
- sufferer n.
- One who suffers; one who endures or undergoes suffering; one who sustains inconvenience or loss; as, sufferers by poverty or sickness; men are sufferers by fire or by losses at sea.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Incurable 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, Incurable, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/incurable.html, id L28087.
Form and metre
Incurable is 10 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 88%).
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 AABBCCDDEE melancholyA · follyA · passionB · fashionB · loverC · recoverC · tetterD · betterD · warmerE · reformerE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| From pride, joy, hate, greed, melancholy-- | 9 | ·····/˘·˘ |
| From any kind of vice, or folly, | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| Bias, propensity or passion | 9 | /˘˘/˘˘·/˘ |
| That is in prevalence and fashion, | 9 | ···/˘˘·/˘ |
| Save one, the sufferer or lover | 9 | ···/˘˘·/˘ |
| May, by the grace of God, recover: | 9 | ······˘/˘ |
| Alone that spiritual tetter, | 9 | ˘/·/˘˘˘/˘ |
| The zeal to make creation better, | 9 | ····˘/˘/˘ |
| Glows still immedicably warmer. | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| Who knows of a reformed reformer? | 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.