The collected works of Ambrose Bierce | ||
188
Leonine, adj.
[_]
Unlike a menagerie lion. Leonine verses are those in which a word in the middle of a line rhymes with a word at the end, as in this famous passage from Bella Peeler Silcox:
[The electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades]
The electric light invades the dunnest deep of Hades.Cries Pluto, 'twixt his snores: “O tempora! O mores!”
It should be explained that Mrs. Silcox does not undertake to teach the pronunciation of the Greek and Latin tongues. Leonine verses are so called in honor of a poet named Leo, whom prosodists appear to find a pleasure in believing to have been the first to discover that a rhyming couplet could be run into a single line.
The collected works of Ambrose Bierce | ||