Book II: The Bird Wounded by an Arrow
A bird, with plumèd arrow shot,In dying case deplored her lot:'Alas!' she cried, 'the anguish of the thought!This ruin partly by myself was brought!Hard-hearted men! from us to borrowWhat wings to us the fatal arrow!But mock us not, ye cruel race,For you must often take our place.'
The work of half the human brothersIs making arms against the others.
Words in this poem
- borrow v. t.
- To receive from another as a loan, with the implied or expressed intention of returning the identical article or its equivalent in kind; -- the opposite of lend. [OE. borwen, AS. borgian, fr. borg, borh, pledge; akin to D. borg, G. borg; prob. fr. root of AS. beorgan to protect. Borough.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Book II: The Bird Wounded by an Arrow is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Fables of La Fontaine, Project Gutenberg ebook #7241, the Elizur Wright translation; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Jean de La Fontaine, Book II: The Bird Wounded by an Arrow, in The Fables of La Fontaine (1841), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #7241, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/la-fontaine-fables/2-6.html, id L28238.
Form and metre
Book II: The Bird Wounded by an Arrow is 10 lines in 2 verse paragraphs. It is in rhyming couplets, 80% of the lines: heroic couplets. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 92%).
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--CC shotA · lotA · thoughtB · broughtB · borrow · arrow · raceC · placeC
- 2 AA brothersA · othersA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| A bird, with plumèd arrow shot, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| In dying case deplored her lot: | 8 | ·/˘·˘/·· |
| 'Alas!' she cried, 'the anguish of the thought! | 10 | ˘/···/˘··· |
| This ruin partly by myself was brought! | 9 | ·//˘··/·· |
| Hard-hearted men! from us to borrow | 9 | ·/˘····/· |
| What wings to us the fatal arrow! | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| But mock us not, ye cruel race, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| For you must often take our place.' | 8 | ···/˘·/· |
| The work of half the human brothers | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| Is making arms against the others. | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
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.