The Fox and the Tragic Mask
A Fox beheld a Mask-- "O rareThe headpiece, if but brains were there!"This holds--whene'er the Fates dispensePomp, pow'r, and everything but sense.
Words in this poem
- dispense v. i.
- To compensate; to make up; to make amends.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
The Fox and the Tragic Mask 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 Fox and the Tragic Mask, in The Fables of Phaedrus (1765), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #25512, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/phaedrus-fables/the-fox-and-the-tragic-mask.html, id L21240.
Form and metre
The Fox and the Tragic Mask is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets: octosyllabic couplets. This poem did not settle on a metre of its own; the book it comes from is in iambic tetrameter.
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 AABB rareA · thereA · dispenseB · senseB
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 Fox beheld a Mask-- "O rare | 8 | ··˘/···· |
| The headpiece, if but brains were there!" | 8 | ·/˘····· |
| This holds--whene'er the Fates dispense | 9 | ·······˘/ |
| Pomp, pow'r, and everything but sense. | 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.