The Eastern Question
Looking across the line, the Grecian said:"This border I will stain a Turkey red."The Moslem smiled securely and replied:"No Greek has ever for his country dyed."While thus each patriot guarded his frontier,The Powers stole all the country in his rear.
Words in this poem
- stole n.
- A long, loose garment reaching to the feet. [AS. stole, L. stola, Gr. stall. See Stall.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Eastern Question 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 Eastern Question, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/the-eastern-question.html, id L28175.
Form and metre
The Eastern Question 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 89%).
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 saidA · redA · repliedB · dyedB · frontierC · rearC
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Looking across the line, the Grecian said: | 10 | /˘˘/···/˘· |
| "This border I will stain a Turkey red." | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| The Moslem smiled securely and replied: | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘·˘/ |
| "No Greek has ever for his country dyed." | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| While thus each patriot guarded his frontier, | 10 | ···/˘/˘·˘/ |
| The Powers stole all the country in his rear. | 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.