Not Guilty
"I saw your charms in another's arms,"Said a Grecian swain with his blood a-boil;"And he kissed you fair as he held you there,A willing bird in a serpent's coil!"
The maid looked up from the cinctured cupWherein she was crushing the berries red,Pain and surprise in her honest eyes--"It was only one o' those gods," she said.
Words in this poem
- cinctured n.
- Having or wearing a cincture or gridle.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Not Guilty 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, Not Guilty, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/not-guilty.html, id L28112.
Form and metre
Not Guilty is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 75%).
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 arms · boilA · there · coilA
- 2 -A-A cup · redA · eyes · saidA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| "I saw your charms in another's arms," | 9 | ·····˘/˘· |
| Said a Grecian swain with his blood a-boil; | 10 | ··/˘······ |
| "And he kissed you fair as he held you there, | 10 | ·········· |
| A willing bird in a serpent's coil!" | 9 | ·/˘···/˘· |
| The maid looked up from the cinctured cup | 10 | ···˘···/˘· |
| Wherein she was crushing the berries red, | 10 | ····/˘·/˘· |
| Pain and surprise in her honest eyes-- | 9 | ··˘/··/˘· |
| "It was only one o' those gods," she said. | 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.