The Politician
"Let Glory's sons manipulateThe tiller of the Ship of State.Be mine the humble, useful toilTo work the tiller of the soil."
Words in this poem
- manipulate v. t.
- To treat, work, or operate with the hands, especially when knowledge and dexterity are required; to manage in hand work; to handle; as, to manipulate scientific apparatus. [LL. manipulatus, p. p. of manipulare to lead by the hand, fr. L. manipulus. See Maniple.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Politician 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 Politician, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/the-politician.html, id L28031.
Form and metre
The Politician is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: heroic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.
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 AABB manipulateA · stateA · toilB · soilB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| "Let Glory's sons manipulate | 8 | ·/˘·˘/˘· |
| The tiller of the Ship of State. | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Be mine the humble, useful toil | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| To work the tiller of the soil." | 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.