At a Dinner Party
With fruit and flowers the board is deckt,The wine and laughter flow;I’ll not complain--could one expectSo dull a world to know?
You look across the fruit and flowers,My glance your glances find.--It is our secret, only ours,Since all the world is blind.
Words in this poem
- expect v. t.
- To wait for; to await. [L. expectatum, to look out for, await, expect; ex + out spectare to look at. See Spectacle.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
At a Dinner Party is in the public domain. This text is taken from A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse, Project Gutenberg ebook #56974; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Amy Levy, At a Dinner Party, in A London Plane-Tree, and Other Verse (1889), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #56974, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/levy-london-plane-tree/at-a-dinner-party.html, id L21566.
Form and metre
At a Dinner Party is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is common measure, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 98%).
See other poems in common measure.
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 decktA · flowB · expectA · knowB
- 2 ABAB flowersA · findB · oursA · blindB
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 common measure. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| With fruit and flowers the board is deckt, | 8 | ···/···· |
| The wine and laughter flow; | 6 | ···/˘· |
| I’ll not complain--could one expect | 8 | ··˘/··˘/ |
| So dull a world to know? | 6 | ······ |
| You look across the fruit and flowers, | 9 | ··˘/···/˘ |
| My glance your glances find.-- | 6 | ···/˘· |
| It is our secret, only ours, | 9 | ··//˘/˘/˘ |
| Since all the world is blind. | 6 | ······ |
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.