To My Laundress
Saponacea, wert thou not so fairI'd curse thee for thy multitude of sins--For sending home my clothes all full of pins--A shirt occasionally that's a snareAnd a delusion, got, the Lord knows where,The Lord knows why--a sock whose outs and insNone know, nor where it ends nor where begins,And fewer cuffs than ought to be my share.But when I mark thy lilies how they grow,And the red roses of thy ripening charms,I bless the lovelight in thy dark eyes dreaming.I'll never pay thee, but I'd gladly goInto the magic circle of thine arms,Supple and fragrant from repeated steaming.
Words in this poem
- sock n.
- A plowshare. Edin. Encyc. [F. soc, LL. soccus, perhaps of Celtic origin.]
- ought p. p.
- Was or were under obligation to pay; owed. [Orig. the preterit of the verb to owe. OE. oughte, aughte, ahte, AS. ahte. sq. root110. See Owe.]
- gladly adv.
- Preferably; by choice. [From Glad, a.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
To My Laundress 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 My Laundress, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/to-my-laundress.html, id L28045.
Form and metre
To My Laundress is 14 lines in a single stanza. It rhymes ABBAABBACDECDE, the pattern of the Italian sonnet. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 86%).
See other Italian sonnets, 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 ABBAABBACDECDE fairA · sinsB · pinsB · snareA · whereA · insB · beginsB · shareA · growC · charmsD · dreamingE · goC · armsD · steamingE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Saponacea, wert thou not so fair | 9 | ········· |
| I'd curse thee for thy multitude of sins-- | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| For sending home my clothes all full of pins-- | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| A shirt occasionally that's a snare | 10 | ··˘/˘˘˘··· |
| And a delusion, got, the Lord knows where, | 10 | ··˘/˘····· |
| The Lord knows why--a sock whose outs and ins | 10 | ·········· |
| None know, nor where it ends nor where begins, | 10 | ········˘/ |
| And fewer cuffs than ought to be my share. | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| But when I mark thy lilies how they grow, | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| And the red roses of thy ripening charms, | 10 | ···/˘··/˘· |
| I bless the lovelight in thy dark eyes dreaming. | 12 | ··········/˘ |
| I'll never pay thee, but I'd gladly go | 10 | ·/˘····/˘· |
| Into the magic circle of thine arms, | 10 | ···/˘/˘··· |
| Supple and fragrant from repeated steaming. | 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.