To Her
O, Sinner A, to me unknownBe such a conscience as your own!To ease it you to Sinner BConfess the sins of Sinner C.
Words in this poem
- sinner n.
- One who has sinned; especially, one who has sinned without repenting; hence, a persistent and incorrigible transgressor; one condemned by the law of God.
- conscience n.
- Knowledge of one's own thoughts or actions; consciousness. [F. conscience, fr. L. conscientia, fr. consciens, p.pr. of conscire to know, to be conscious; con- + scire to know. See Science.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To Her 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 Her, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/to-her.html, id L28001.
Form and metre
To Her 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 unknownA · ownA · bB · cB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| O, Sinner A, to me unknown | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Be such a conscience as your own! | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| To ease it you to Sinner B | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Confess the sins of Sinner C. | 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.