Inventory
Four be the things I am wiser to know:Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe.
Four be the things I'd been better without:Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt.
Three be the things I shall never attain:Envy, content, and sufficient champagne.
Three be the things I shall have till I die:Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye.
Words in this poem
- curiosity n.
- The state or quality or being curious; nicety; accuracy; exactness; elaboration. [OE. curiouste, curiosite, OF. curioseté, curiosité, F. curiosit, fr. L. curiositas, fr. curiosus. See Currious, and cf. Curio.]
- shall v. i.
- To owe; to be under obligation for. [OE. shal, schal, imp. sholde, scholde, AS. scal, sceal, I am obliged, imp. scolde, sceolde, inf. sculan; akin to OS. skulan, pres. skal, imp. skolda, D. zullen,]
- champagne n.
- A light wine, of several kinds, originally made in the province of Champagne, in France. [F. See Champaign.]
- sock n.
- A plowshare. Edin. Encyc. [F. soc, LL. soccus, perhaps of Celtic origin.]
Definitions and etymologies from Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913.
About this text
Inventory 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, Inventory, in Enough Rope (1926), text of Project Gutenberg ebook #68353, Laurel, https://laurelpoetry.com/poem/parker-enough-rope/inventory.html, id L27354.
Form and metre
Inventory is 8 lines in 4 stanzas of 2 lines each. It is in rhyming couplets.
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 knowA · foeA
- 2 AA withoutA · doubtA
- 3 AA attainA · champagneA
- 4 AA dieA · eyeA
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Four be the things I am wiser to know: | 10 | ······/˘·· |
| Idleness, sorrow, a friend, and a foe. | 10 | /˘˘/˘····· |
| Four be the things I'd been better without: | 10 | ······/˘·· |
| Love, curiosity, freckles, and doubt. | 10 | ··˘/˘˘/˘·· |
| Three be the things I shall never attain: | 10 | ······/˘˘/ |
| Envy, content, and sufficient champagne. | 10 | /˘/˘·˘/˘˘/ |
| Three be the things I shall have till I die: | 10 | ·········· |
| Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye. | 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.