Fighting Words
Say my love is easy had,Say I'm bitten raw with pride,Say I am too often sad,--Still behold me at your side.
Say I'm neither brave nor young,Say I woo and coddle care,Say the devil touched my tongue,--Still you have my heart to wear.
But say my verses do not scan,And I get me another man!
Words in this poem
- coddle v. t.
- To parboil, or soften by boiling. [Cf. Prov. E. caddle to coax, spoil, fondle, and Cade, a. & v. t.]
- scan v. t.
- To mount by steps; to go through with step by step. [L. scandere, scansum, to climb, to scan, akin to Skr. skand to spring, leap: cf. F. scander. Cf. Ascend, Descend, Scale a ladder.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Fighting Words 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, Fighting Words, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/fighting-words.html, id L27392.
Form and metre
Fighting Words is 10 lines in 3 stanzas. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, complete in 2 of its 3 stanzas. The metre is trochaic tetrameter, measured from the stress the words themselves fix (confidence 90%).
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 hadA · prideB · sadA · sideB
- 2 ABAB youngA · careB · tongueA · wearB
- 3 AA scanA · manA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Say my love is easy had, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Say I'm bitten raw with pride, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Say I am too often sad,-- | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Still behold me at your side. | 7 | ·˘/···· |
| Say I'm neither brave nor young, | 7 | ··/˘··· |
| Say I woo and coddle care, | 7 | ····/˘· |
| Say the devil touched my tongue,-- | 8 | ··/˘·˘·· |
| Still you have my heart to wear. | 7 | ······· |
| But say my verses do not scan, | 8 | ···/˘··· |
| And I get me another man! | 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.