The Cock and the Pearl
A Cock, while scratching all around,A Pearl upon the dunghill found:"O splendid thing in foul disgrace,Had there been any in the placeThat saw and knew thy worth when sold,Ere this thou hadst been set in gold.But I, who rather would have gotA corn of barley, heed thee not;No service can there render'd beFrom me to you, and you to me."I write this tale to them aloneTo whom in vain my pearls are thrown.
Words in this poem
- dunghill n.
- A heap of dung.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Cock and the Pearl 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 Cock and the Pearl, in The Fables of Phaedrus (1765), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #25512, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/phaedrus-fables/the-cock-and-the-pearl.html, id L21283.
Form and metre
The Cock and the Pearl is 12 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 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 AABBCCDDEEFF aroundA · foundA · disgraceB · placeB · soldC · goldC · gotD · notD · beE · meE · aloneF · thrownF
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 Cock, while scratching all around, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| A Pearl upon the dunghill found: | 8 | ·····/˘· |
| "O splendid thing in foul disgrace, | 8 | ·/˘···˘/ |
| Had there been any in the place | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| That saw and knew thy worth when sold, | 8 | ········ |
| Ere this thou hadst been set in gold. | 8 | ········ |
| But I, who rather would have got | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| A corn of barley, heed thee not; | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| No service can there render'd be | 8 | ·/˘··/˘· |
| From me to you, and you to me." | 8 | ········ |
| I write this tale to them alone | 8 | ······˘/ |
| To whom in vain my pearls are thrown. | 8 | ········ |
Notes from the edition 1
Henry T. Riley's notes to his prose translation of the Fables of Phaedrus (George Bell & Sons, 1887; Project Gutenberg #25512), aligned fable-by-fable, per book, against Christopher Smart's verse translation of the same fables, which is what the site carries.
- Have no relish for me)--Ver. 8. From this passage we may infer either that Phædrus himself had many censurers at Rome, or that the people in general were not admirers of Fables.
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.