Analysis of L'audace
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
Daughter of God! Audacity divine
Of clowns the terror and of brains the sign
Not thou the inspirer of the rushing fool,
Not thine of idiots the vocal drool:
Thy bastard sister of the brow of brass,
Presumption, actuates the charging ass.
Sky-born Audacity! of thee who sings
Should strike with freer hand than mine the strings;
The notes should mount on pinions true and strong,
For thou, the subject shouldst sustain the song,
Till angels lean from Heaven, a breathless throng!
Alas! with reeling heads and wavering tails,
They (notes, not angels) dropp and the hymn fails;
The minstrel's tender fingers and his thumbs
Are torn to rags upon the lyre he strums.
Have done! the lofty thesis makes demand
For stronger voices and a harder hand:
Night-howling apes to make the notes aspire,
And Poet Riley's fist to slug the rebel wire!
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEEFFGGHHIJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 1011010001 1101001101 110110101 1111000101 1101010111 01010101 1101001111 1111011101 011111101 1100110101 11011100101 01110101001 1111010011 011010011 1111010111 1101010101 1101000101 1101110101 0101011101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 822 |
Words | 146 |
Sentences | 9 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 19 |
Lines Amount | 19 |
Letters per line (avg) | 35 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 661 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 144 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 44 sec read
- 107 Views
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"L'audace" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 9 Jun 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1825/l%27audace>.
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