Book VI: The Dog That Dropped the Substance for the Shadow
This world is full of shadow-chasers,Most easily deceived.Should I enumerate these racers,I should not be believed.I send them all to Aesop's dog,Which, crossing water on a log,Espied the meat he bore, below;To seize its image, let it go;Plunged in; to reach the shore was glad,With neither what he hoped, nor what he'd had.
About this text
Book VI: The Dog That Dropped the Substance for the Shadow 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 VI: The Dog That Dropped the Substance for the Shadow, in The Fables of La Fontaine (1841), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #7241, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/la-fontaine-fables/6-17.html, id L28330.
Form and metre
Book VI: The Dog That Dropped the Substance for the Shadow is 10 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 60% of the lines: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 94%).
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 ABABCCDDEE chasersA · deceivedB · racersA · believedB · dogC · logC · belowD · goD · gladE · hadE
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 |
|---|---|---|
| This world is full of shadow-chasers, | 9 | ·····/·/˘ |
| Most easily deceived. | 7 | ·/˘˘˘/˘ |
| Should I enumerate these racers, | 9 | ··˘/˘··/˘ |
| I should not be believed. | 7 | ····˘/˘ |
| I send them all to Aesop's dog, | 8 | ·····/·· |
| Which, crossing water on a log, | 8 | ·/˘/˘··· |
| Espied the meat he bore, below; | 7 | ······· |
| To seize its image, let it go; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| Plunged in; to reach the shore was glad, | 8 | ········ |
| With neither what he hoped, nor what he'd had. | 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.