To an Aspirant
What! you a Senator--you, Mike de Young?Still reeking of the gutter whence you sprung?Sir, if all Senators were such as you,Their hands so crimson and so slender, too,--(Shaped to the pocket for commercial work,For literary, fitted to the dirk)--So black their hearts, so lily-white their livers,The toga's touch would give a man the shivers.
Words in this poem
- dirk n.
- A kind of dagger or poniard; -- formerly much used by the Scottish Highlander. Dirk knife, a clasp knife having a large, dirklike blade. [Ir. duirc.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To an Aspirant 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, To an Aspirant, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/to-an-aspirant.html, id L28157.
Form and metre
To an Aspirant is 8 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 88%).
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 AABBCCDD youngA · sprungA · youB · tooB · workC · dirkC · liversD · shiversD
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 |
|---|---|---|
| What! you a Senator--you, Mike de Young? | 10 | ···/˘˘···· |
| Still reeking of the gutter whence you sprung? | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| Sir, if all Senators were such as you, | 10 | ···/˘˘···· |
| Their hands so crimson and so slender, too,-- | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| (Shaped to the pocket for commercial work, | 10 | ···/˘·˘/˘· |
| For literary, fitted to the dirk)-- | 10 | ·/˘·˘/˘··· |
| So black their hearts, so lily-white their livers, | 11 | ·····/˘··/˘ |
| The toga's touch would give a man the shivers. | 11 | ·/˘······/˘ |
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.