Analysis of Authority
Ambrose Bierce 1842 (Meigs County) – 1914 (Chihuahua)
'Authority, authority!' they shout
Whose minds, not large enough to hold a doubt,
Some chance opinion ever entertain,
By dogma billeted upon their brain.
'Ha!' they exclaim with choreatic glee,
'Here's Dabster if you won't give in to me
Dabster, sir, Dabster, to whom all men look
With reverence!' The fellow wrote a book.
It matters not that many another wight
Has thought more deeply, could more wisely write
On t' other side-that you yourself possess
Knowledge where Dabster did but faintly guess.
God help you if ambitious to persuade
The fools who take opinion ready-made
And 'recognize authorities.' Be sure
No tittle of their folly they'll abjure
For all that you can say. But write it down,
Publish and die and get a great renown
Faith! how they'll snap it up, misread, misquote,
Swear that they had a hand in all you wrote,
And ride your fame like monkeys on a goat!
Scheme | AABBCCDDEEFFGGHHIIJJJ |
---|---|
Poetic Form | |
Metre | 0100010011 1111011101 110101001 11010111 1101111 111111011 11111111 1100010101 11011100101 1111011101 11101110101 101111101 1111010101 0111010101 010010011 110111011 1111111111 1001010101 1111110101 1111010111 0111110101 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 863 |
Words | 159 |
Sentences | 11 |
Stanzas | 1 |
Stanza Lengths | 21 |
Lines Amount | 21 |
Letters per line (avg) | 33 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 684 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 153 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 47 sec read
- 84 Views
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"Authority" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 14 May 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/1723/authority>.
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