The Bride
"You know, my friends, with what a brave carouseI made a second marriage in my house--Divorced old barren Reason from my bedAnd took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse."
So sang the Lord of Poets. In a gleamOf light that made her like an angel seem,The Daughter of the Vine said: "I myselfAm Reason, and the Other was a Dream."
Words in this poem
- spouse v. t.
- To wed; to espouse. [See Espouse, and Spouse, n.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Bride 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, The Bride, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/the-bride.html, id L28199.
Form and metre
The Bride is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 93%).
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 carouse · houseA · bed · spouseA
- 2 AA-A gleamA · seemA · myself · dreamA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| "You know, my friends, with what a brave carouse | 10 | ········˘/ |
| I made a second marriage in my house-- | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Divorced old barren Reason from my bed | 10 | ˘/·/˘/˘··· |
| And took the Daughter of the Vine to spouse." | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| So sang the Lord of Poets. In a gleam | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| Of light that made her like an angel seem, | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| The Daughter of the Vine said: "I myself | 10 | ·/˘······/ |
| Am Reason, and the Other was a Dream." | 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.