Analysis of Expositor Veritatis
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
I Slept, and, waking in the years to be,
Heard voices, and approaching whence they came,
Listened indifferently where a key
Had lately been removed. An ancient dame
Said to her daughter: 'Go to yonder caddy
And get some emery to scour your daddy.'
And then I knew-some intuition said
That tombs were not and men had cleared their shelves
Of urns; and the electro-plated dead
Stood pedestaled as statues of themselves.
With famous dead men all the public places
Were thronged, and some in piles awaited bases.
One mighty structure's high facade alone
Contained a single monumental niche,
Where, central in that steep expanse of stone,
Gleamed the familiar form of Thomas Fitch.
A man cried: 'Lo! Truth's temple and its founder!'
Then gravely added: 'I'm her chief expounder.'
Scheme | ABABAA CDCDEE FGFGHH |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1101000111 1100010111 101101 1101011101 11010111010 011100110110 011110101 1101011111 1100010101 1111101 11011101010 01010101010 1101010101 010100101 1100110111 1001011101 01111100110 110101011 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 765 |
Words | 135 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 3 |
Stanza Lengths | 6, 6, 6 |
Lines Amount | 18 |
Letters per line (avg) | 34 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 204 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 43 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 40 sec read
- 122 Views
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"Expositor Veritatis" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 1 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1770/expositor-veritatis>.
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