Book IV: The Words of Socrates
A house was built by SocratesThat failed the public taste to please.Some blamed the inside; some, the out; and allAgreed that the apartments were too small.Such rooms for him, the greatest sage of Greece!'I ask,' said he, 'no greater blissThan real friends to fill e'en this.'And reason had good SocratesTo think his house too large for these.A crowd to be your friends will claim,Till some unhandsome test you bring.There's nothing plentier than the name;There's nothing rarer than the thing.
Words in this poem
- unhandsome a.
- Not handsome; not beautiful; ungraceful; not comely or pleasing; plain; homely.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Book IV: The Words of Socrates 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 IV: The Words of Socrates, in The Fables of La Fontaine (1841), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #7241, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/la-fontaine-fables/4-17.html, id L28287.
Form and metre
Book IV: The Words of Socrates is 13 lines in a single stanza. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
See 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 AABB-CCAADEDE socratesA · pleaseA · allB · smallB · greece · blissC · thisC · socratesA · theseA · claimD · bringE · nameD · thingE
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 house was built by Socrates | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| That failed the public taste to please. | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Some blamed the inside; some, the out; and all | 10 | ···˘/····· |
| Agreed that the apartments were too small. | 10 | ˘/··˘/˘··· |
| Such rooms for him, the greatest sage of Greece! | 10 | ·····/˘··· |
| 'I ask,' said he, 'no greater bliss | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| Than real friends to fill e'en this.' | 7 | ······· |
| And reason had good Socrates | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| To think his house too large for these. | 8 | ········ |
| A crowd to be your friends will claim, | 8 | ········ |
| Till some unhandsome test you bring. | 8 | ··˘/˘··· |
| There's nothing plentier than the name; | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| There's nothing rarer than the thing. | 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.