De Profundis
Oh, is it, then, UtopianTo hope that I may meet a manWho'll not relate, in accents suave,The tales of girls he used to have?
Words in this poem
- suave a.
- Sweet; pleasant; delightful; gracious or agreeable in manner; bland. [L. suavis sweet, pleasant: cf. F. suave. See Sweet, and cf. Suasion.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
De Profundis 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, De Profundis, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/de-profundis.html, id L27359.
Form and metre
De Profundis is 4 lines in a single stanza. It is in rhyming couplets, 50% of the lines.
See other poems in rhyming couplets.
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 AA-- utopianA · manA · suave · have
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. How this is done.
| Line | Syl. | Stress |
|---|---|---|
| Oh, is it, then, Utopian | 8 | ····˘/˘˘ |
| To hope that I may meet a man | 8 | ········ |
| Who'll not relate, in accents suave, | 8 | ··˘/·/˘· |
| The tales of girls he used to have? | 8 | ········ |
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.