Analysis of The Valley Of Dry Bones
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
With crow bones all the land is white,
From the gates of morn to the gates of night.
Picked clean, they lie on the cumbered ground,
And the politician's paunch is round;
And he strokes it down and across as he sings:
'I've eaten my fill of the legs and wings,
The neck, the back, the pontifical nose,
Breast, belly and gizzard, for everything goes.
The meat that's dark (and there's none that's white)
Exceeded the need of my appetite,
But I've bravely stuck to the needful work
That a hungry domestic hog would shirk.
I've eaten the fowl that the Fates commend
To reluctant lips of the People's Friend.
Rank unspeakably, bitter as gall,
Is the bird, but I've eaten it, feathers and all.
I'm a dutiful statesman, I am, although
I really don't like a diet of crow.
So I've dined all alone in a furtive way,
But my platter I've cleaned every blessed day.
They say that I bolt; so I do-my bird;
They say that I sulk, but they've widely erred!
O Lord! if my enemies only knew
How I'm full to the throat with the corvic stew
They'd open their ears to hear me profess
The faith compelled by the corvic stress,
(For, alas! necessity knows no law)
In the heavenly caucus-'Caw! Caw! Caw!''
And that ornithanthropical person tried
By flapping his arms on the air to ride;
But I knew by the way that he clacked his bill
He was just the poor, featherless biped, Dave Hill.
Scheme | AABBCCDDAAEEFFGGHHIIXXJJKKLL MMNN |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 11110111 1011110111 11111011 00010111 01111001111 1101110101 0101001001 1100101101 011101111 010011110 1110110101 1010010111 1100110101 1010110101 111011 101111011001 1010010111 1101101011 11110100101 11101110011 1111111111 1111111101 1111100101 1111011011 1101111101 01011011 1010100111 0010010111 011101 1101110111 11110111111 11101100111 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,337 |
Words | 256 |
Sentences | 15 |
Stanzas | 2 |
Stanza Lengths | 28, 4 |
Lines Amount | 32 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 8 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 521 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 127 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 21, 2023
- 1:21 min read
- 78 Views
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"The Valley Of Dry Bones" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1982/the-valley-of-dry-bones>.
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