Analysis of Fable Or History
Victor Marie Hugo 1802 (Besançon) – 1885 (Paris)
Possessed of royal appetite, and feeling rather thin,
A monkey one day dressed himself in a tiger's skin
The tiger had been nasty; the monkey was atrocious,
Wearing on his back the right to be ferocious.
He set himself to gnashing teeth and let loose with this cry:
Conqueror of the jungle, the night's dark king am I!
As a bandit of the forest, in the bushes he lurked,
And snatched away and murdered and other horrors worked.
Laid waste the forest, slit the throats of those passing through,
And with the skin that covered him did all it used to do.
He lived within a cave, knee-deep in butchery,
And all who saw the skin believed the tiger was he.
He would cry out, would bring forth a truly terrible roar:
Behold within my cave the bones of victims before.
Before me all draw back and shudder, everyone doth flee,
All tremble - I am tiger! Look! and worship me!
The animals were all awe-struck and fled with great alarm,
A lion-tamer came and grabbed him with his arm,
And ripped off the tiger's skin like a flimsy piece of tissue,
Laid bare this 'conqueror' and said, 'You're just a monkey, you!'
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEFFGGFFHHEE |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0111010010101 0101110100101 01011100101010 101110111010 11011101011111 1001010011111 10101010001011 0101010010101 1101010111101 01011101111111 110101110100 0111010101011 11111110101001 0101110111001 0111110101011 110111010101 01000111011101 010101011111 01101011010111 11110001110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic heptameter |
Characters | 1,090 |
Words | 206 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 20 |
Lines Amount | 20 |
Letters per line (avg) | 43 |
Words per line (avg) | 10 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 856 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 203 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 21, 2023
- 1:02 min read
- 283 Views
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"Fable Or History" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/37720/fable-or-history>.
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