Analysis of Consolation
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
Little's the good to sit and grieve
Because the serpent tempted Eve.
Better to wipe your eyes and take
A club and go out and kill a snake.
What do you gain by cursing Nick
For playing her such a scurvy trick?
Better go out and some villain find
Who serves the devil, and beat him blind.
But if you prefer, as I suspect,
To philosophize, why, then, reflect:
If the cunning rascal upon the limb
Hadn't tempted her she'd have tempted him.
| Scheme | AABB CCDD EEFF |
|---|---|
| Poetic Form | Quatrain |
| Metre | 10011101 01010101 10111101 010110101 11111101 11001011 101101101 110100111 111011101 111101 1010100101 1010011101 |
| Closest metre | Iambic tetrameter |
| Characters | 432 |
| Words | 85 |
| Sentences | 6 |
| Stanzas | 3 |
| Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4 |
| Lines Amount | 12 |
| Letters per line (avg) | 28 |
| Words per line (avg) | 7 |
| Letters per stanza (avg) | 113 |
| Words per stanza (avg) | 28 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 26 sec read
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"Consolation" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1741/consolation>.
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