Condolence
They hurried here, as soon as you had died,Their faces damp with haste and sympathy,And pressed my hand in theirs, and smoothed my knee,And clicked their tongues, and watched me, mournful-eyed.Gently they told me of that Other Side--How, even then, you waited there for me,And what ecstatic meeting ours would be.Moved by the lovely tale, they broke, and cried.
And when I smiled, they told me I was brave,And they rejoiced that I was comforted,And left, to tell of all the help they gave.But I had smiled to think how you, the dead,So curiously preoccupied and grave,Would laugh, could you have heard the things they said.
Words in this poem
- broke v. i.
- To transact business for another. Brome. [See Broker, and cf. Brook.]
- curiously adv.
- In a curious manner.
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Condolence 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, Condolence, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/condolence.html, id L27347.
Form and metre
Condolence is 14 lines in 2 stanzas. The metre is iambic pentameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 89%).
See other poems in iambic pentameter.
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-BAABBA diedA · sympathy · kneeB · eyedA · sideA · meB · beB · criedA
- 2 ABABAB braveA · comfortedB · gaveA · deadB · graveA · saidB
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 iambic pentameter. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| They hurried here, as soon as you had died, | 10 | ·/˘······· |
| Their faces damp with haste and sympathy, | 10 | ·/˘····/˘˘ |
| And pressed my hand in theirs, and smoothed my knee, | 10 | ·········· |
| And clicked their tongues, and watched me, mournful-eyed. | 10 | ·······/˘· |
| Gently they told me of that Other Side-- | 10 | /˘·····/˘· |
| How, even then, you waited there for me, | 10 | ·/˘··/˘··· |
| And what ecstatic meeting ours would be. | 10 | ··˘/˘/˘/·· |
| Moved by the lovely tale, they broke, and cried. | 10 | ···/˘····· |
| And when I smiled, they told me I was brave, | 10 | ·········· |
| And they rejoiced that I was comforted, | 10 | ··˘/···/˘˘ |
| And left, to tell of all the help they gave. | 10 | ·········· |
| But I had smiled to think how you, the dead, | 10 | ·········· |
| So curiously preoccupied and grave, | 10 | ·/˘˘˘/˘··· |
| Would laugh, could you have heard the things they said. | 10 | ·········· |
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.