For an Unsuccessful Sinner
I boasted my sins were sure to sink meOut of all sound and sight of glory;And the most I’ve won for all my painsIs a century of purgatory.
Words in this poem
- purgatory a.
- Tending to cleanse; cleansing; expiatory. Burke. [L. purgatorius.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
For an Unsuccessful Sinner is in the public domain. This text is taken from Color, Project Gutenberg ebook #70543; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Countee Cullen, For an Unsuccessful Sinner, in Color (1925), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #70543, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/cullen-color/for-an-unsuccessful-sinner.html, id L01450.
Form and metre
For an Unsuccessful Sinner is 4 lines in a single stanza. The lines average 9.2 syllables. 2 lines end on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 me · gloryA · pains · purgatoryA
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| I boasted my sins were sure to sink me | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Out of all sound and sight of glory; | 9 | ·······/˘ |
| And the most I’ve won for all my pains | 9 | ········· |
| Is a century of purgatory. | 9 | ··/˘·/˘·˘ |
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.