Two Types

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) · 1903

iambic pentameter · 2 lines · from Shapes of Clay

Courageous fool!--the peril's strength unknown.Courageous man!--so conscious of your own.

About this text

Two Types 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, Two Types, in Shapes of Clay (1903), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #12658, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bierce-shapes-of-clay/two-types.html, id L28178.

Form and metre

Two Types is 2 lines in a single stanza. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic pentameter.

See 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. 1 AA unknownA · ownA
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.

LineSyl.Stress
Courageous fool!--the peril's strength unknown.10˘/˘··/˘·˘/
Courageous man!--so conscious of your own.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.

More by Ambrose Bierce