The Ass and Priests of Cybele
The luckless wretch that's born to woeMust all his life affliction know--And harder still, his cruel fateWill on his very ashes wait.Cybele's priests, in quest of bread,An Ass about the village led,With things for sale from door to door;Till work'd and beaten more and more,At length, when the poor creature died,They made them drums out of his hide.Then question'd "how it came to passThey thus could serve their darling Ass?"The answer was, "He thought of peaceIn death, and that his toils would cease;But see his mis'ry knows no bounds,Still with our blows his back resounds."
Words in this poem
- luckless a.
- Being without luck; unpropitious; unfortunate; unlucky; meeting with ill success or bad fortune; as, a luckless gamester; a luckless maid.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Ass and Priests of Cybele is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Fables of Phædrus Literally translated into English prose with notes, Project Gutenberg ebook #25512; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Phaedrus, The Ass and Priests of Cybele, in The Fables of Phaedrus (1765), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #25512, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/phaedrus-fables/the-ass-and-priests-of-cybele.html, id L21291.
Form and metre
The Ass and Priests of Cybele is 16 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. The metre is iambic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 96%).
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 AABBCCDDEEFFGGHH woeA · knowA · fateB · waitB · breadC · ledC · doorD · moreD · diedE · hideE · passF · assF · peaceG · ceaseG · boundsH · resoundsH
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 |
|---|---|---|
| The luckless wretch that's born to woe | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| Must all his life affliction know-- | 8 | ····˘/˘· |
| And harder still, his cruel fate | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| Will on his very ashes wait. | 8 | ···/˘/˘· |
| Cybele's priests, in quest of bread, | 7 | ······· |
| An Ass about the village led, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| With things for sale from door to door; | 8 | ········ |
| Till work'd and beaten more and more, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| At length, when the poor creature died, | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| They made them drums out of his hide. | 8 | ········ |
| Then question'd "how it came to pass | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| They thus could serve their darling Ass?" | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| The answer was, "He thought of peace | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| In death, and that his toils would cease; | 8 | ········ |
| But see his mis'ry knows no bounds, | 8 | ········ |
| Still with our blows his back resounds." | 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.