Book III: The Lion Beaten by the Man
A picture once was shown,In which one man, alone,Upon the ground had thrownA lion fully grown.Much gloried at the sight the rabble.A lion thus rebuked their babble:--'That you have got the victory there,There is no contradiction.But, gentles, possibly you areThe dupes of easy fiction:Had we the art of making pictures,Perhaps our champion had beat yours!'
Words in this poem
- gloried a.
- Illustrious; honorable; noble. [See Glory.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Book III: The Lion Beaten by the Man 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 III: The Lion Beaten by the Man, in The Fables of La Fontaine (1841), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #7241, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/la-fontaine-fables/3-10.html, id L28262.
Form and metre
Book III: The Lion Beaten by the Man is 12 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 87%).
See other poems in octosyllabic couplets, other poems in iambic tetrameter.
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 AAAABB-C-C-- shownA · aloneA · thrownA · grownA · rabbleB · babbleB · there · contradictionC · are · fictionC · pictures · yours
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 tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| A picture once was shown, | 6 | ·/˘··· |
| In which one man, alone, | 6 | ····˘/ |
| Upon the ground had thrown | 6 | ······ |
| A lion fully grown. | 6 | ·/˘/˘· |
| Much gloried at the sight the rabble. | 9 | ·/˘····/˘ |
| A lion thus rebuked their babble:-- | 9 | ·/˘·˘/·/˘ |
| 'That you have got the victory there, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| There is no contradiction. | 7 | ····˘/˘ |
| But, gentles, possibly you are | 8 | ·/˘/˘˘·· |
| The dupes of easy fiction: | 7 | ···/˘/˘ |
| Had we the art of making pictures, | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| Perhaps our champion had beat yours!' | 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.