Analysis of A 'Mute Inglorious Milton'

Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)



'O, I'm the Unaverage Man,
But you never have heard of me,
For my brother, the Average Man, outran
My fame with rapiditee,
And I'm sunk in Oblivion's sea,
But my bully big brother the world can span
With his wide notorietee.
I do everything that I can
To make 'em attend to me,
But the papers ignore the Unaverage Man
With a weird uniformitee.'

So sang with a dolorous note
A voice that I heard from the beach;
On the sable waters it seemed to float
Like a mortal part of speech.
The sea was Oblivion's sea,
And I cried as I plunged to swim:
'The Unaverage Man shall reside with me.'
But he didn't-I stayed with him!


Scheme ABACBACABAC CDCDBEBE
Poetic Form
Metre 11011 11101111 11100100101 1111 011011 11101100111 1111 1110111 1110111 101001011 1011 111011 01111101 1010101111 1010111 01111 01111111 01110111 11101111
Closest metre Iambic pentameter
Characters 606
Words 123
Sentences 6
Stanzas 2
Stanza Lengths 11, 8
Lines Amount 19
Letters per line (avg) 25
Words per line (avg) 6
Letters per stanza (avg) 236
Words per stanza (avg) 60
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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on March 05, 2023

37 sec read
260

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist. more…

All Ambrose Bierce poems | Ambrose Bierce Books

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