Advice to a Woman
The sloping lines of your shouldersSpeak of Chinese pagodas.They clash with your western faceWhere child and courtesanClasp each other in a feigned embrace.Life, to you, is a liquid mirror.You stand with delicate, perpetual amazement,Vainly seeking your reflection.
Words in this poem
- courtesan n.
- A woman who prostitutes herself for hire; a prostitute; a harlot. [F. courtisane, fr. courtisan courtier, It. cortigiano; or directly fr. It. cortigiana, or Sp. cortesana. See Court.]
- amazement n.
- The condition of being amazed; bewilderment ; overwhelming wonder, as from surprise, sudden fear, horror, or admiration.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Advice to a Woman is in the public domain. This text is taken from Advice: A Book of Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #60252; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Maxwell Bodenheim, Advice to a Woman, in Advice: A Book of Poems (1920), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #60252, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/bodenheim-advice/advice-to-a-woman.html, id L23373.
Form and metre
Advice to a Woman is 8 lines in a single stanza. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 79%).
See other poems in trochaic tetrameter.
Measured by Laurel's pipeline, not copied from a handbook: how stress and metre are counted, how rhyme is lettered, how a drifted rhyme is found. Where the dictionary cannot confirm a rhyme the letter is withheld, not guessed.
Rhyme words, stanza by stanza
The word that ends each line, lettered by the rhyme it makes; a dash is a line whose rhyme the dictionary could not confirm.
- 1 --A-A--- shoulders · pagodas · faceA · courtesan · embraceA · mirror · amazement · reflection
Scansion, line by line
Each line with its syllable count and the stresses the words themselves fix: / stressed, ˘ unstressed, · a syllable the word leaves free and the metre decides. Read against trochaic tetrameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| The sloping lines of your shoulders | 8 | ·/˘···/˘ |
| Speak of Chinese pagodas. | 7 | ··˘/˘/˘ |
| They clash with your western face | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Where child and courtesan | 6 | ···/˘˘ |
| Clasp each other in a feigned embrace. | 9 | ··/˘···˘/ |
| Life, to you, is a liquid mirror. | 9 | ·····/˘/˘ |
| You stand with delicate, perpetual amazement, | 11 | ···/˘˘/˘˘/˘ |
| Vainly seeking your reflection. | 8 | /˘/˘·˘/˘ |
The reader shows the same poem with its rhymes coloured and a stress row above each line, the notes beside their stanzas, and any word's definition on a tap; the analysis page takes the whole book apart. How every part of this site was made.