Oneiromancy
I fell asleep and dreamed that IWas flung, like Vulcan, from the sky;Like him was lamed--another part:His leg was crippled and my heart.I woke in time to see my loveConceal a letter in her glove.
Words in this poem
- crippled a.
- Lamed; lame; disabled; impeded.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Oneiromancy 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, Oneiromancy, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/oneiromancy.html, id L28096.
Form and metre
Oneiromancy is 6 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 iA · skyA · partB · heartB · loveC · gloveC
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I fell asleep and dreamed that I | 9 | ··˘/··˘·· |
| Was flung, like Vulcan, from the sky; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Like him was lamed--another part: | 9 | ····˘˘/˘· |
| His leg was crippled and my heart. | 9 | ···/˘˘··· |
| I woke in time to see my love | 8 | ········ |
| Conceal a letter in her glove. | 8 | ˘/·/˘··· |
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.