A Very Short Song
Once when I was young and true,Someone left me sad--Broke my brittle heart in two;And that is very bad.
Love is for unlucky folk,Love is but a curse.Once there was a heart I broke;And that, I think, is worse.
Words in this poem
- broke v. i.
- To transact business for another. Brome. [See Broker, and cf. Brook.]
- folk 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.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
A Very Short Song is in the public domain. This text is taken from Enough Rope: Poems, Project Gutenberg ebook #68353; the transcription's header, footer and licence were removed and nothing else was changed. You may copy, print and reuse it freely.
Cite as: Dorothy Parker, A Very Short Song, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/a-very-short-song.html, id L27321.
Form and metre
A Very Short Song is 8 lines in 2 stanzas of 4 lines each. Every stanza rhymes ABAB. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 85%).
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 trueA · sadB · twoA · badB
- 2 ABAB folkA · curseB · brokeA · worseB
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Once when I was young and true, | 7 | ······· |
| Someone left me sad-- | 5 | /···· |
| Broke my brittle heart in two; | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| And that is very bad. | 6 | ···/˘· |
| Love is for unlucky folk, | 7 | ···˘/˘· |
| Love is but a curse. | 5 | ····· |
| Once there was a heart I broke; | 7 | ······· |
| And that, I think, is worse. | 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.