Chant for Dark Hours
Some men, some menCannot pass aBook shop.(Lady, make your mind up, and wait your life away.)
Some men, some menCannot pass aCrap game.(He said he'd come at moonrise, and here's another day!)
Some men, some menCannot pass aBar-room.(Wait about, and hang about, and that's the way it goes.)
Some men, some menCannot pass aWoman.(Heaven never send me another one of those!)
Some men, some menCannot pass aGolf course.(Read a book, and sew a seam, and slumber if you can.)
Some men, some menCannot pass aHaberdasher's.(All your life you wait around for some damn man!)
Words in this poem
- crap n.
- In the game of craps, a first throw of the dice in which the total is two, three, or twelve, in which case the caster loses.
- moonrise n.
- The rising of the moon above the horizon; also, the time of its rising.
- damn v. t.
- To condemn; to declare guilty; to doom; to adjudge to punishment; to sentence; to censhure. [OE. damnen dap), OF. damner, dampner, F. damner, fr. L. damnare, damnatum, to condemn, fr. damnum damage, a fine, penalty. Cf. Condemn, Damage.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Chant for Dark Hours 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, Chant for Dark Hours, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/chant-for-dark-hours.html, id L27351.
Form and metre
Chant for Dark Hours is 24 lines in 6 stanzas of 4 lines each. The metre is trochaic dimeter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 83%).
See other poems in trochaic dimeter.
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 men · aA · shop · awayA
- 2 -A-A men · aA · game · dayA
- 4 A-A- menA · a · womanA · those
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 dimeter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Some men, some men | 4 | ···· |
| Cannot pass a | 4 | /˘·· |
| Book shop. | 2 | ·· |
| (Lady, make your mind up, and wait your life away.) | 12 | /˘········˘/ |
| Some men, some men | 4 | ···· |
| Cannot pass a | 4 | /˘·· |
| Crap game. | 2 | ·· |
| (He said he'd come at moonrise, and here's another day!) | 13 | ·····/˘··˘/˘· |
| Some men, some men | 4 | ···· |
| Cannot pass a | 4 | /˘·· |
| Bar-room. | 2 | ·· |
| (Wait about, and hang about, and that's the way it goes.) | 13 | ············· |
| Some men, some men | 4 | ···· |
| Cannot pass a | 4 | /˘·· |
| Woman. | 2 | /˘ |
| (Heaven never send me another one of those!) | 10 | //··˘/˘··· |
| Some men, some men | 4 | ···· |
| Cannot pass a | 4 | /˘·· |
| Golf course. | 2 | ·· |
| (Read a book, and sew a seam, and slumber if you can.) | 13 | ········/˘··· |
| Some men, some men | 4 | ···· |
| Cannot pass a | 4 | /˘·· |
| Haberdasher's. | 4 | ···· |
| (All your life you wait around for some damn man!) | 11 | ··········· |
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.