L'audace
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
Daughter of God! Audacity divine
Of clowns the terror and of brains the sign
Not thou the inspirer of the rushing fool,
Not thine of idiots the vocal drool:
Thy bastard sister of the brow of brass,
Presumption, actuates the charging ass.
Sky-born Audacity! of thee who sings
Should strike with freer hand than mine the strings;
The notes should mount on pinions true and strong,
For thou, the subject shouldst sustain the song,
Till angels lean from Heaven, a breathless throng!
Alas! with reeling heads and wavering tails,
They (notes, not angels) dropp and the hymn fails;
The minstrel's tender fingers and his thumbs
Are torn to rags upon the lyre he strums.
Have done! the lofty thesis makes demand
For stronger voices and a harder hand:
Night-howling apes to make the notes aspire,
And Poet Riley's fist to slug the rebel wire!
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 44 sec read
- 107 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEEFFGGHHIJ |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 822 |
Words | 146 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 19 |
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"L'audace" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 4 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/1825/l'audace>.
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