Analysis of Two Shows
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
The showman (blessing in a thousand shapes!)
Parades a 'School of Educated Apes!'
Small education's needed, I opine,
Or native wit, to make a monkey shine;
The brute exhibited has naught to do
But ape the larger apes who come to view
The hoodlum with his horrible grimace,
Long upper lip and furtive, shuffling pace,
Significant reminders of the time
When hunters, not policemen, made him climb;
The lady loafer with her draggling 'trail,'
That free translation of an ancient tail;
The sand-lot quadrumane in hairy suit,
Whose heels are thumbs perverted by the boot;
The painted actress throwing down the gage
To elder artists of the sylvan stage,
Proving that in the time of Noah's flood
Two ape-skins held her whole profession's blood;
The critic waiting, like a hungry pup,
To write the school-perhaps to eat it-up,
As chance or luck occasion may reveal
To earn a dollar or maraud a meal.
To view the school of apes these creatures go,
Unconscious that themselves are half the show.
These, if the simian his course but trim
To copy them as they have copied him,
Will call him 'educated.' Of a verity
There's much to learn by study of posterity.
Scheme | AABBCCDEFFGGHHIIJJKKLLMMNNOO |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0101000101 010111001 101010101 1101110101 0101001111 1101011111 0101110010 1101010101 0100010101 1101010111 010101011 1101011101 01110101 1111010101 0101010101 1101010101 1010011101 1111010101 0101010101 1101011111 1111010101 1101010101 1101111101 101011101 1101001111 1101111101 11110010100 111111010100 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 1,128 |
Words | 206 |
Sentences | 7 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 28 |
Lines Amount | 28 |
Letters per line (avg) | 32 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 904 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 200 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:02 min read
- 100 Views
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"Two Shows" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 27 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/2025/two-shows>.
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