{
 "id": "ambrose-bierce/a-plague-of-asses",
 "title": "A Plague of Asses",
 "ordinal": null,
 "subtitle": null,
 "poet": "Ambrose Bierce",
 "poet_slug": "ambrose-bierce",
 "language": "en",
 "book": "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume IV",
 "book_slug": "collected-works-iv",
 "book_kind": "volume",
 "sequence": 10,
 "container": "Shapes of Clay",
 "epigraph": null,
 "first_published": {
  "year": 1910,
  "venue": "The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Volume IV (1910)",
  "note": "Taken from Volume IV of the Neale collected edition (copyright 1910). That is the printing this text comes from, not the poem's first appearance: the volume's own preface speaks of the verses republished in this volume and the next, and which newspaper or earlier book printed this poem first has not been established here.",
  "uncertain": true,
  "sources": [
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof04bierrich"
  ]
 },
 "source": {
  "kind": "standard-ebooks",
  "repo": "standardebooks/ambrose-bierce_poetry",
  "file": "shapes-of-clay.xhtml",
  "upstream": [
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4793",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12658",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12977",
   "https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15599",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof04bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof05bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/collectedworksof08bierrich",
   "https://archive.org/details/shapesofclay00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/blackbeetlesinam00bier",
   "https://archive.org/details/literarycalifor05mighgoog",
   "https://archive.org/details/cali07webb"
  ],
  "rights": "public domain (SE dedication; underlying text pre-1931)"
 },
 "verification": {
  "level": "structural-only",
  "last_checked": "2026-08-20"
 },
 "stats": {
  "n_lines": 30,
  "n_stanzas": 1,
  "n_parts": 0,
  "longest_line_chars": 48,
  "max_indent": 0
 },
 "site_ready": true,
 "parts": [],
 "stanzas": [
  [
   {
    "text": "Alas, we’ve fallen upon an evil time,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Our journals are all in a rash of rhyme.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Slang, “dialect,” the humor of the slum,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Done into stanzas by the rule of thumb,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "The peasant word, the coarse, colloquial phrase,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Fitting the pauper thought that it conveys,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "March to the meter-master’s “hep, hep, hep,”",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With every second soldier out of step.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "What sins of ours deserve this heavy curse?",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Who taught our clowns ’tis easy to write verse",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "If neither poetry nor wit be deemed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A needful ornament, nor sense esteemed",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "A twin of sound? O rustics of the quill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Ill-made by Nature, making others ill,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "(Landlubbers on the sea of song a-sail",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Uttering your fancies o’er the leeward rail)",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Forgive the wicked wish I cannot choose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "But entertain⁠—that, luckless, you may lose",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Each one a thumb of the tormenting ten",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Whereon you reckon syllables. Ah, then,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Restored to what it was before you learned",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "That grinning through horse-collars ever earned",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Plaudits of rustics and enough of dollars",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "To pay the weekly rental of the collars,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "With something over for the stomach’s throes,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Your ailing verse will turn to ailing prose.",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Then joyous angels will look down and say:",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "“Behold! the ninety-nine that went astray",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Return to where, from fields of noxious grass,",
    "indent": 0
   },
   {
    "text": "Sweet thistles beckon each repenting ass.”",
    "indent": 0
   }
  ]
 ]
}