What's the Use
What's the use o' folks a-frownin'When the way's a little rough?Frowns lay out the road fur smilin'You'll be wrinkled soon enough.What's the use?
What's the use o' folks a-sighin'?It's an awful waste o' breath,An' a body can't stand wastin'What he needs so bad in death.What's the use?
What's the use o' even weepin'?Might as well go long an' smile.Life, our longest, strongest arrow,Only lasts a little while.What's the use?
Words in this poem
- folks n.
- In Anglo-Saxon times, the people of a group of townships or villages; a community; a tribe. [AS. folc; akin to D. volk, OS. & OHG. folk, G. volk, Icel. f, Sw. & Dan. folk, Lith. pulkas crowd, and perh. to E. follow.]
- needs adv.
- Of necessity; necessarily; indispensably; -- often with must, and equivalent to of need. [Orig. gen. of need, used as an adverb. Cf. - wards.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
What's the Use is in the public domain. This text is taken from The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar, Project Gutenberg ebook #18338; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Paul Laurence Dunbar, What's the Use, in The Complete Poems (1893–1905), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #18338, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/dunbar-poems/what-s-the-use.html, id L00831.
Form and metre
What's the Use is 15 lines in 3 stanzas of 5 lines each. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 95%). 97% of its stressed syllables fall where the metre puts the beat. The lines average 6.7 syllables. 1 line ends on an unstressed syllable, a feminine ending.
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 ABAB- frowninA · roughB · smilinA · enoughB · use
- 2 ABAB- sighinA · breathB · wastinA · deathB · use
- 3 -A-A- weepin · smileA · arrow · whileA · use
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 |
|---|---|---|
| What's the use o' folks a-frownin' | 8 | ········ |
| When the way's a little rough? | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Frowns lay out the road fur smilin' | 8 | ········ |
| You'll be wrinkled soon enough. | 8 | ··/˘˘·˘/ |
| What's the use? | 3 | ··· |
| What's the use o' folks a-sighin'? | 8 | ········ |
| It's an awful waste o' breath, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| An' a body can't stand wastin' | 8 | ··/˘···· |
| What he needs so bad in death. | 7 | ······· |
| What's the use? | 3 | ··· |
| What's the use o' even weepin'? | 8 | ····/˘·· |
| Might as well go long an' smile. | 7 | ······· |
| Life, our longest, strongest arrow, | 9 | ·/˘/˘/˘/˘ |
| Only lasts a little while. | 7 | /˘··/˘· |
| What's the use? | 3 | ··· |
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.