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!'

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Submitted on May 13, 2011

Modified on April 21, 2023

1:02 min read
283

Quick analysis:

Scheme AABBCCDDEEFFGGFFHHEE
Closest metre Iambic heptameter
Characters 1,090
Words 206
Stanzas 1
Stanza Lengths 20

Victor Marie Hugo

Victor Marie Hugo was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement. He is considered one of the greatest and best known French writers. In France, Hugo's literary fame comes first from his poetry but also rests upon his novels and his dramatic achievements. Among many volumes of poetry, Les Contemplations and La Légende des siècles stand particularly high in critical esteem. Outside France, his best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and Notre-Dame de Paris, 1831. Though a committed royalist when he was young, Hugo's views changed as the decades passed; he became a passionate supporter of republicanism, and his work touches upon most of the political and social issues and artistic trends of his time. He was buried in the Panthéon. more…

All Victor Marie Hugo poems | Victor Marie Hugo Books

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